I'm pretty stupid about how my router works, and can't seem to get my head around the forwarding.

my current setup: Linksys BEFW11S4, with DHCP and http:80 being forwarded to 192.168.1.100, 3 pcs connected, and occasionally a portable device or two.

If you set up a website on a machine behind the router, it seems that you have to reconfigure the router any time the server machine is assigned a new IP. Static IPs are a pain, since you have to manually configure every device you connect. I guess that's not really a question...I just wish there was a simple way to always forward http to the same machine while allowing other devices to connect dynamically to the network.


Here's a real question...

How does one remotely ssh into an arbitrary machine on a network? If you're not within the LAN, you would need to use the public IP address to access the network, but then what? How do you specify which machine on the network you want to log into? Is this one of those situations where you need to have multiple public IP addresses?

if you run a server behind your router, the best option is to assign a static ip below the range of the built in dhcp server.
if you have a newer router, some will have the option to set a reservation. this will assign a ip to the servers mac address.

whatever app or service you need forwarded has a port or port range, just set it in the router to forward to the ip address of the server.

My router doesn't seem to have the option of setting a static IP while still providing DHCP for everyone else. The forwarding help says in big bold letters: You must disable the router's DHCP function to utilize this function.

I'm thinking maybe it would be simpler to leave it as is and change the forwarding address when needed (tends to be once every few weeks) rather than disable DHCP. I assume DHCP is needed for easy wifi access, or does wifi have a separate DHCP server?

I'm gonna guess that second part had to do with my ssh question? My question was more about what happens if you have more than one machine running sshd on a network. You wouldn't be able to forward ssh to both of them, and even if you could, how would you connect to a specific machine from outside the network? So I guess you'd need to have multiple IP addresses assigned by your ISP.

Like I said...I don't understand a lot of this.

Oh, wait....if ssh port is forwarded to one machine, can you login to that machine, and then ssh from there to another LAN address? I've got both my linux boxes running at the moment...time to try it....

...well, whattya know...it works =o)

I've seen that before, you can set a static without turning off dhcp. give it a try.

I'll give it a try in a minute, but right now there's an annoying problem. I enabled remote management just to test it, and now I can't disable it for some reason...click "apply" and it does nothing =op

power it off then back on and try, if you set remote management change the default port from 80 or 8080 to 9090
you may want to check if there is a firmware update for the router

It eventually applied the change after restarting the browser and logging in again.

And the DHCP + static routing worked great =o)
You're pretty smart with this networking stuff...you should consider it as a possible career if you ever decide to leave the church.

yeah, I may change careers.

who ya gonna trust?
me, that's who.
why?
cause I'm trustworthy.

Yeah, dhcp doesn't FORCE network users to take an address, the connection handshake is basically:

from the computers end:
I need an address...check for local config

if local config says "use these static settings", then it attempts to connect to the network at the gateway address, tells the gateway its static ip, and if there are no conflicts, it works.

If it is set to use dhcp, it skips telling the gateway it has an address, and just says 'hey dhcp, give me some settings, bitch'. Then dhcp sets it up, and is all "who's the bitch now?"...having fucked up all your port foward preferences since your ipod now has your server IP.

True story.

warning, if you're gonna assign a static ip to a device and you have a router giving out ip's, assign a static below the starting ip or well above the amount of ip's that devices will use.
if your range is 10 to 150, then over 150 is fine if you only have 6 pc's then 140 to 150 is fine since the highest that will be assigned will be 106 maybe 112 if the router doesn't expire the given ip and the pc gets a new one.

reminds me of a small network, where they had a server (2003) giving out ip's, a router with dhcp enabled and a network storage device with dhcp enabled. and they wondered why websites weren't working and logging into the domain took forever. if 2003 server detects another dhcp server on the network it will shut down it's dhcp server.
took about a hour to fix it and they thought we were magicians.*LOL*
only took 30 minutes but stretched it to a hour cause their it guy had an attitude cause we were called in.
he's gonna have a bigger attitude when I present a service contract that's cheaper than them keeping idiot with an attitude on.

Yeah, I caught that the first time you mentioned it. Thanks =o)