I did not know where to ask this so here it is. This is more of a networking technology question, but any pointers will help.
Suppose, I want to connect to a machine behind multiple gateways. Say I want to connect to my home computer from my office computer. My home computer is behind my ISP's gateway and then behind my wireless router at home. Let's say I know the IP's for all of them. (global IP for my ISP's gateway, local IP for my wireless router within my ISP's n/w and my home machine's local IP within my home). How do I initiate a TCP connection with my home computer ? The standard berkeley socket program only takes one IP and so I can only connect to machines that have global IPs.
Is there a solution ? Am I correct about the berkeley sockets ?
Thanks.
It is entirely possible, with the cooperation of the ISP. The fact that the ISP is giving private addresses should urge you to move to another.
The concept you're after is called DNAT or Port Forwarding.
Let's say you decide on accessing port 1234 on a PC. The address of the PC is Local2. The address of the wireless router (in the network with the ISP) is Local1.
The wireless router must do the translation Local1:X -> Local2:1234
The ISP router must do the translation Public:1234 -> Local1:X
The X means any port can be used.
You only need to know the destination IP address to connect from an application, the gateway address is for the forwarding (routing) of packets which is handled by the OS network stack. However, if the destination is behind NAT, you'll only know the public IP address of the destination's NAT device. Even in this scenario, all you have would be an IP address and you don't really know if there is NAT going on.
If your destination is fixed, you could set up port forwarding on the NAT device (if you control it). Otherwise, you just realized that NAT is pure evil.
In your situation, it appears you want to connect to your home computer. If your wireless device has a public IP address, you can setup port forwarding on that to forward all incoming traffic on a port to a port on your home computer.
Related
Suppose that two computers use the same Wi-Fi to access the Internet. Each of these computers has the same program installed, which is bound to the same UDP port. I want to know, since both computers have the same external IP address and listen to the same port but on different machines, what will be the result if a UDP datagram is sent to this common external address and to a common port, then which machine will receive it and how to send it each machine its own personal datagram?
The router will not forward the packet to either computer, since it doesn't know which one it should forward to.
In fact, even if the program was only running on one computer, the router still wouldn't forward the packet. It has to see outbound traffic going from the computer to the outside world first, before it decides which external port to use for forwarding inbound traffic back to the computer. And the router might not decide to use the same port on the public IP that the computer used on the private IP.
This is why everyone hates NAT and likes IPv6.
In UPnP IGD there is 2 services "WANPPPConnection" (or WanIPConnection) and WANIPv6FirewallControl that have methods that look similar:
AddPinhole
Add(Any)PortMapping
Both taking similar arguments (remote/internal host/port, protocol, lease time).
I was wondering, what is the difference between them ? FW control is apparently exclusive to IPv6 while PortMapping seems to allow both v4 and v6, so what is the real difference ? Is there a different behavior ?
A (typical) IPv4 firewall, embedded in an Internet router, has a single IPv4 address on the Internet, on its WAN interface. Devices on the LAN behind it typically use private range addresses. This means that they are not reachable from the Internet.
If a service on a device must be reachable from the Internet, the router must be instructed to forward incoming traffic from one of its ports on its WAN interface, to a port on the LAN device. This is called a "port forwarding," using the NAPT (Network Address and Port Translation) feature of the router.
On IPv6, routers are not provided with a single address on the WAN interface, but a whole prefix. Devices on the LAN all have publicly routeable addresses. There is no need for address and port translation on the router.
The firewall in the router, however, may be configured to block all incoming connections. In this case, the router's firewall must be instructed to pass through traffic to certain ports on certain protocols to certain LAN addresses. This is called a "pinhole" in the UPnP-IGD standard.
I like to connect to a TCP server that run in a machine that is connected to the LAN in my home network. This LAN can be connected to internet via either following methods.
1. Through a router which has a wireless or wired WAN connection
2. Through a router which uses a mobile broadband connection, for example a router that accept a USB modem to connect to internet.
I know in the first case, we can use port forwarding.
In the second case, I believe telcos use PPP protocol and port forwarding does not work.
In addition, even in the first case, if ISP does not give a static IP, then we need to use DNS mapping service to map a fixed URL to the allocated dynamic IP and we need to configure router to go and register the dynamic ip at the start up.
My question is, are there any other better methods that can be used in this situation? I am wondering how chat applications connect to each other? I hope they maintain a TCP connection between two devices, without a central relay server?
I'm writing a C# remote control for my media player. It runs on my Android phone.
I have a client app listening for TCP connections on my computer which, one a connection has been established, processes commands (Volume up, volume down, ...). I've tested that part using telnet 127.0.0.1 on my computer, and it works great.
Things are trickier when it comes to connecting from my phone, since it's not on the same network (I don't have Wi-Fi, only wired connections), so I'm not sure how to proceed. Basically I want to connect to a computer that's behind a router.
Should I rather host the TCP server on my phone, and have the PC connect to it? Take IRC as an example: although I'm behind a router, I can connect to servers outside, without port forwarding.
Or if hosting the server on my computer is fine, how do I connect to it?
I don't understand everything to this yet, so feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.
It would be more logical to keep the PC hosting the server, and configure your router to forward connections to your PC. You have two options:
Establish a DMZ: all incoming connections on the router will be forwarded to one PC only. This is easiest when you only have 1 PC on the network that needs to accept connections.
Configure port forwarding: you can instruct the router to forward connections incoming on port X to the IP Y on port Z. This way, multiple PC's can listing for connections (using different ports on the router). It is also a bit more secure.
How to set these up depends on your router, but most routers just accept connections on their port 80 and offer an easy web-interface. If you give your router brand, we can link you to the manual.
Things are trickier when it comes to connecting from my phone, since
it's not on the same network (I don't have Wi-Fi, only wired
connections), so I'm not sure how to proceed. Basically I want to
connect to a computer that's behind a router.
What you want to achieve is possible, but you need to learn about NAT traversal and hole punching.
Most often, devices behind a NAT/Router have a private IP address only valid on the LAN. Remote devices can't guess it. This private address is translated into a public IP address by the NAT when the device wants to communicate with the WAN.
The easy solution is you can give a public IP address to the device behind the NAT. In this case, remote devices on the WAN will easily be able to reach it, because its address is public.
I want to connect to a system which is behind a router. I know the public address of the router as well as the private ip (fixed always) of the system. How do i establish socket connection with the private ip?
This is why some people say that they are behind a "firewall", when they are behind a router. The Evil Viruses Of The Internet are not able to exploit any software on a computer behind a router (provided that the router admin didn't configure it in the funny way, for example by enabling DMZ).
You still have some options:
Talk to the router admin and make him forward a port for You
Take the router out and put Your "target" computer where Your router was, or enable DMZ (this only makes sense if there was only one computer behind the router). Warrning: install a firewall on the target computer first!
Turn the socket 180 degrees. Make the computer behind a router establish the connection to the server that has a public IP address
Use something like UPnP, if Your router supports it
Get a dedicated IP address for Your computer and configure router to switch all traffic to this IP address to Your computer (this is similar to DMZ, but would work if You have more than one computer behind the router). Warrning: install a firewall on the target computer first!
Use NAT traversal. There is a very good article on the subject here. Simplified version is that client establishes connection to some remote server. The server can see the opened port number on the client's router and this port is assigned to the client's machine, so it (or some another computer sharing this information) may establish connection to that port and reach the client's application. Warrning: this doesn't work with all routers. Some routers just won't let this happen.
The simplest thing is probably to forward the port from the system you want to connect to through the router.
This is more a question of configuration of the router as opposed to your actual program. If the router isn't configured to forward traffic to the private system, there's no way to force it to connect you - rather, the private system would have to open the connection on its own.
Strictly speaking, the answer to your question is "you can't". You can however enable DNAT (Destination Network Address Translation) on your router. You connect to a certain port on the router, and it forwards the connection to the internal ip. The internal ip (and port) are configured in the router settings and are not known by the connecting client.