Setting alternate placeshifting port - work firewall!

[matt91]

This topic has been mentioned many times (link link)in the discussions of the various beta releases, but it's somewhat hard to piece together the pieces of advice from across the different threads - especially since I'm not always sure if a new version has ‘overruled’ an old piece of advice.

Anyway, I can’t connect from work on port 31099 to my home server. I’ve verified with the telnet ‘trick’ and get a connection failed error.

My questions are:

1. How do I determine what ports I *can* get out on from work?
2. Assuming I find one to use, it appears I setup the MVP to use that port as well so my MVP will work at home, and placeshifting from work.
3. Have others done this successfully?

Thanks
Matt

[Opus4]

I don't know how you would determine which ports you can access via work, but once you do figure out a port number...

Originally Posted by matt91

Assuming I find one to use, it appears I setup the MVP to use that port as well so my MVP will work at home, and placeshifting from work.

You do not want to change the extender_and_placeshifter_server_port property if you are using an MVP, because the MVP will no longer be able to connect.

What you want to do is configure your router to forward <port X> to port 31099 at the local IP address of your SageTV server. You may or may not be able to do such a manual port forwarding configuration on your router (mine doesn't allow me to specify different external & internal port numbers). If your router has UPnP capabilities, you can use the placeshifter internet connection wizard (via Detailed Setup -> Advanced) to configure the router like that.

- Andy

[matt91]

Thanks, Andy.

I do have a UPnP router, so once I snoop around and find a good port to try, I'll attempt it tonight.

For clarification, you said that some routers don't allow manually setting this (i.e., yours) but using UPnP/Placeshifting wizard can do it. Just making sure I understand that you're saying that "despite not being able to manually set this up on my router, I can use my UPnP functionally with the placeshifting wizard to do this".

Matt

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by matt91

Just making sure I understand that you're saying that "despite not being able to manually set this up on my router, I can use my UPnP functionally with the placeshifting wizard to do this".

Yes, that is what I meant.

I suppose that UPnP on some router might not be capable of that either, but it is worth trying if you can't do it manually.

- Andy

[DocDrydenn]

(Please forgive the semi-double post. I couldn't figure out how to insert a link to another post in another thread I made, so I just copied and pasted.)

Let me add to this, since this topic is about placeshifter which I don't use, I believe a webproxy will not work for placeshifter. Maybe someone else can comment on that. So with that said, the last paragraph may not be of any help.

I posted this in the webserver import thread in response to some people not being able to connect to their home network from their work network. The ideas still hold to this thread, yet the details may not. You'll get the idea. (I hope.)

Here’s a few suggestions for your problems:

First thing you might want to check is your ISP. My ISP blocks some of the main ports that a server would use. i.e. 80, 25, 21 etc... (if I'm not mistaken, 8080 is considered an alternate port 80) Why would they do this? Simple. Its because these ports are mainly used for servers, and my ISP does not allow residential users to run their own servers. They want you pay the business price for that. (No thank you.) You may just need to use a port that your ISP has not blocked. Pick something like 8484. (BTW, we are talking about inbound ports here.)

If that doesn't work, it may be that your work's network is blocking you. Now, I cannot speak for every company out there, but I can speak for mine. They block entire ranges of IPs. As a matter of fact, they block the entire residential IP range my ISP uses. What ever can you do to fix this? Well, not much really, but there is a work-around you can try. You must use a web proxy.

For anyone not in the know about web proxies:
A web proxy allows you to bypass the restricted IPs set by your company’s network. A web proxy is nothing more than a website that allows you to enter a URL to another site. It then fetches the data from that site and passes it back to you. This only works if your work’s network allows access to the web proxy’s site. My work has a few of the biggest known web proxy sites blocked, but not all of them. I must warn you though. This may be a violation of your work’s network policy. As long as you don’t use it to surf porn or any other content deemed wrong by your work, you should be fine. Basically, just don’t surf places you shouldn’t. It’ll flag you for inspection by your company’s network ITs.
Here is an example of a site I use. It’s pretty simple to understand. Give it a try. You can even use it from home if you wish.
http://www.spysurfing.com/