There's an application. This application is run on several different client devices and it makes use of a server: that is, each of those instances of the application may connect to a server, said server being a certain remote machine that is constantly listening for incoming connections, at which point the client machine and the server machine communicate following a certain protocol.
Now, this is all nice and easy as long as I'm testing within one LAN managed by one router. I can simply set the server machine to have a static IP address and this address will just be hardcoded into the application so that every instance of it will be able to directly communicate with the server endpoint. But what I'm not sure about is what I'd do if this application was intended to run outside the limits of a single LAN with private IP addresses.
Basically, my question is what approach should I choose in order to have a static way to access a specific remote machine.
Is there any static public address that can be used to reach it? Or should I purchase a domain name and have it respond to requests from clients with the server machine's current public IP address? Or should I go on and purchase a static external IP address? Or am I simply not thinking about this the right way, and the solution should be approached from an entirely different direction?
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I am developing a custom Alexa Skill and have a requirement where I want Alexa to access REST APIs that are hosted locally on http://localhost:8080? Any idea how to do this?
Thanks!
If you really want to do this, and I’m assuming you are hosting the skill on AWS Lambda, it would involve quite a bit of work.
Your local endpoints need to be accessible from outside of your network, which requires port forwarding in your router to your machine where the endpoints are hosted. This needs to be configured in your router.
An easier way is to deploy your project containing the API to something like Heroku, which can be done easily. They give you a domain and make the endpoints accessible to Lambda. This should be possible within their free tier.
Here' a link to a pretty good article about how IP addresses work.
Allowing a device sitting on your local network (eg. a laptop computer or Raspberry Pi connected to your wifi) to be accessed from outside your local network (eg. from a service running on AWS) will involve mapping 2 separate IP addresses:
The IP address assigned to your router (your public IP)
The private IP addresses assigned by your router to your devices (laptop, iPhone, RPi, etc).
You have a couple options for allowing your router's IP (#1) to be accessible from outside your local network:
a. Pay your internet provider to provide you with a static IP address
b. Use a dynamic DNS service such as DuckDNS or No-IP.
Once you have a fixed public IP that can be used to access your router, you will then need to map a port on your router (#1) to the device IP on your local network (#2). This is usually referred to as "port forwarding". Most routers will support configuring this. In effect, your tell your router "when you get a message to : pass it to my laptop :"
Your local private IP address will typically have an IP value like 192.168.0.23 (where the 23 can be anything from 1 to 254).
An outside IP will start with something other than 192. Refer to the first link above regarding IP ranges.
You can google "port forwarding" and "public IP" for more info on how IP addresses and port forwarding work, but hopefully this will help get you started. It may seem a bit complicated at first, but if I can understand it, then anyone can :-)
i'm planning on implementing web server hosted by Raspberry Pi at home, while also having a Dedicated Server with public IP.
The main problem is that my provider charge a lot for a static ip, so i simply dont want to pay.
And here is the question:
Is it possible to achieve what i've mentioned on given diagram (if yes, then maybe some hints?)
Will RPi be accessible through local network while connected to VPN
Thank you for any help!
1.
That is basically possible, it is called a Reverse-Proxy (See wiki for a brief description). The exact implementation depends on the web server you use.
Your dedicated Server will then accept client connections, get the content over the VPN from your Raspberry and serve it to the client like it's his.
2.
Your Pi will still be accessible from the local network while being in the VPN, since it should use a virtual adapter for the connection if its a client on its own. Otherwise, if the router acts as a gateway to the VPN it will do the routing and again your Pi will be fine.
So I am kind of new to networking and I'm just interested in the client/server architecture. Let's say you developed a program and the client version ran on a computer and the server version on the server(obviously). In order for the client to connect to the server, it would have to know the ip address of the server (and the port attached so it can be routed to the correct computer/program). Does that mean that the server's ip address can not change? Would you have to specifically tell your ISP to keep the ip address static? Because if both the client and server ip addresses change, then they would have no way to connect and the program wouldn't work... in other words there has to be one constant. When you sign up for a VPS do they give you a static ip address you can bind to from the client version? Thanks!
In order for the client to connect to the server, it would have to know the ip address of the server (and the port attached so it can be routed to the correct computer/program).
Correct.
Does that mean that the server's ip address can not change?
No. In fact, IPs can change at any time. Most servers that are exposed to the public Internet have a static domain name registered in the Internet's DNS system. A client asks DNS to resolve the desired domain name to its current IP address, and then the client can connect to it. But even in private LANs, most routers act as a local DNS server, allowing machines on the same network to discover each other's IP by machine name.
The OS typically handles DNS for you. A client can simply call gethostbyname() or prefferably getaddrinfo(), and the OS will perform DNS queries as needed on the client's behalf and return back the reported IP(s).
Would you have to specifically tell your ISP to keep the ip address static?
You can, but that usually costs extra. And it is not necessary if your server is registered in DNS. And there are free/cheap DNS systems that work with servers that do not have a static IP.
Because if both the client and server ip addresses change, then they would have no way to connect and the program wouldn't work...
That is where DNS comes into play.
in other words there has to be one constant.
A registered domain name that can be resolved by DNS.
When you sign up for a VPS do they give you a static ip address you can bind to from the client version?
It depends on the VPS service, but a more likely scenario would be you are assigned a static sub-domain within the VPS service's main domain. For example, myserver.thevps.com. Or, if you buy your own domain (which can be done very cheaply from any number of providers), you can usually link it to the DNS server operated by your VPS service.
I have a question about network connections among computers.
I've made some applications where messages pass through the Internet (via sockets) to make a connection between two devices. However, a strong condition is that two devices must be connected to the same network.
Can anyone give me a trick how to create a communication using sockets between two computers even if they are connected to different netwkorks?
Thank you in advance.
Here is a great tutorial on how to use sockets and general networking
(in java) http://www.thenewboston.org/watch.php?cat=25&number=38
In order to communicate between two diffrent networks over the internet, you will need to do something called port forwarding. What that does is that when your public IP of your network receives a packet with a spesific port number. The router knows where to send that packet to which local IP.
If you dont port forward and receive some data. The router doesent know where to send the packet. Therefore it discards it, which means others wont be able to connect to you.
You will only need to port forward the network with your server (using the example i linked). How you do that is by logging in to your router, and say that a port which the server uses gets forwarded to the IP of the PC hosting the server.
On the other network (client) you will need to change the IP address of which the client shall connect to. That IP address needs to be your public IP of your server's network. You can find that by connecting to the server's network and go to: http://www.whatsmyip.org/ . Keep in mind that public IP addresses may change over time.
Hope this helped!
-Kad
I want to develop an iPhone app with a simple IM feature. I am thinking about setting up an HTTP server on an iPhone. If the iPhone is using wifi and is behind a firewall, how can I make sure that other iPhone clients can connect to it?
It's not the firewall that will disturb the connection as much it is the NAT.
When you are connected through wireless router to connect the internet you are surfing via NAT. it means you dont really have an extenral IP but once you initiate connection the router will map your intenral IP to one of his externatl ports and for certain time window he will pass connections to you if he will get it to the right port.
That being said, there is no actual way of setting a server behind a NAT unless you can configure port forwarding in the router and internal static IP.
Hope i was clear enough, good luck
I do not really think that you need to get an HTPP server up and running on iPhone to make an application that can send and receive messages (IM). The idea of making one iPhone user to directly connect to one another does not seem right to me since the users will need to know IP addresses of one another to do that.
Interconnectivity between different users of the chat can be solved by making your application communicate via a dedicated TCP port. It is generally advisable to choose ports with a number higher than 1024 since those below are generally found on the list of so-called well-known ports and are used for Web (like port 80), FTP (port 21), SSH (22), DNS (53), etc., it will be the responsibility of the user to make sure the port used by your application is open on the firewall. In order to solve this problem you can actually use port 80 for communication if you find that the port you have selected is blocked. You can do this because you know that this port will not be blocked in most cases. Indeed Yahoo Messenger is reported to use this technique when the firewall blocks the port it uses for communication.
The port should be used by your application to connect to the Web-server that will actually store user credentials, perform authentication, message transmission, etc., and the server should reside on capable hardware to be able to support large number of simultaneous connections. I can suggest using either a VPS (like the one provided by Linode) or a cloud (like Amazon EC2, Google Application Engine, Rackspace).