A wee bit of help getting my email and newsreader working (complete newbie to wireles

[Thomas Davie]

Last night I bought a laptop and an SMC 54g barricade router and 54g notebook adapter. After hair pulling and lengthy calls to VERY helpful tech support at SMC, I'm up and running. However, I've found that neither my email nor newsgroup reader work. I suspect that this is because I have to configure something called NAT address mapping (well, the limited documentation alludes to this). I've got no idea how to do port forwarding, and would appreciate being guided in the right directions.

If it helps at all, I'm running in 802.11g mode only, with WPA turned on, MAC address restrictions and 'hidden' SSID.

thanks

Tom

[JackMDS]

Internet and Routers.

Many people use Cable/DSL Router as the first line of defense.
Entry Level Cable/DSL Routers main function is to provide Network Address Translation (NAT). It is necessary to provide NAT when you share one Internet connection so that each computer will send, and receive the Internet information that belongs to it.

By product of this NAT is simple but effective Firewall.

NAT is implemented in a way that each computer can get only the info that was requested from inside of the LAN. As a result "rouge" info. from the Internet can not get in (since it was not requested). The NAT Firewall just blocks en-mass every thing that tries to come in none requested.

So what do you do if you want a system that can answer requests coming independently in?

The "Shut Gun" approach is to put one computer on the DMZ. (De Militarized Zone) i.e. no military no one is protecting you. Under this setting one of your Network computers is out in front of the Firewall, thus all the ports are Opened. Be careful while being on the DMZ the computer is exposed to the Internet

Port Opening - Individual and few Ports can be open for special communication.

E.g. In a case you want to keep an ftp server, to let your friends download files.

You open the port and info can come in through this port regardless of the NAT (e.g. for ftp you open port 21).

Port Range - Most Routers let you define a range of ports to be kept open (e.g. 5000-6000).

Port Triggering - Some applications connect to the Internet by using port X expecting an answer through port Y. Port Triggering makes sure that port Y is available to receive the answer.

The way to open a port depends on the Router, and or Firewall program. Each manufacture has his own "Shticks" to go about it. Each one has his way of organizing the Menus. You have to read the Manual in order to know how to do it. The term that it is referred to could be Port Mapping, Port Opening, etc. In a Virtual Server.

==============
List of ports that are associated with various applications can be found here:

Link: Special Applications - Port List. (http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/app_port_list.htm)
.

[Bodi]

probably not a port forwarding problem, NAT works fine for email and news clients as the local machine initiates the connection; port forwarding is needed when the outside world initiates - like running a local HTTP or FTP server.
Probably your ISP uses short names for the news and mail servers. Check your reader setup for the account server names, if they are something like "news" "pop" and "smtp" that's the likely problem.
You may be able to ask the ISP for the FQDN addresses for their servers, maybe not.
You can connect directly to the internet with a computer and ping the server to get the information you need.
Open a command prompt window and type
ping -a <server short name>
You'll either get a IP address like nntp.whatever.whatever.com or an IP#. Trying this with the router between you and the modem won't work because of the same problem that's stopping you from reading your email.
The IP# may be dynamic and you should try to get a server name, I think the number will work in the account's server setup but if the service stops working again you will have to repeat the exercise. The name may change as well but it isn't as likely to happen often.
Some routers and ISPs will work with short names if you put the segment suffix in the router setup page as "domain name". You get this by doing a tracert to some known IP address. The first segment should be your router, the second will be your segment concentrator. Throw out the first group and enter the rest in as "domain name". eg: second tracert address is 4237ddbl.shty.crpy.cbl.isp.com your domain would be shty.crpy.cbl.isp.com