TR Forums

I'm trying to get back to mac setup for someone and am running into some issues. According to the guide, Apple says that the router used must have the UPNP or NAT PNP. This person has a 2wire (Qwest) modem on one side and a modem from Integra Telecom (not sure what brand) on the other. The other end is the office that has the mac they want to control. Both are sitting behind a airport extreme (office) and airport express (home). Neither modem seems to have either feature so I attempted to forward the ports required. I have seen in some places that only UDP 4500 and TCP 443 are required but in some places I read that it needs UDP 5900. I forwarded those on both ends to the mac. At the home end I set the airport express to bridge mode to elminate a double nat isssue on that end. After that I ran a port scan and neither one have the ports open. I logged in and out of the .mac account but the back to mac status still shows it sees a nat problem. I double checked that both have the builtin firewall off. My next question is:

1. Do both ends need the same setup even though only 1 mac will be controlled?
2. If mobile me is running and ports that it uses are opened to it then why do the ports not show as being open?

I'm going over some basic stuff, but you've got screen/file sharing enabled, right?

The ports are forwarded via uPnP, so at least on an Airport Extreme, you won't see any manual mappings. You can try manually forwarding UDP port 4500 and TCP port 5354 from the remote router to the computer you want to control. If you're using an Airport Extreme, go to the Airport Utility, double-click the router and go to Advanced. Under Port Mapping, you can add what you need with both internal and external ports and the IP address in question. The router will restart (not sure why, no other router I've ever used needed to restart for forwarded ports) and then you should have your forwarding settings in effect.

I checked it is enabled. So it should be TCP 5354? The apple documentation shows 443 so maybe that is where I am going wrong.

I was going off of what I found on a post in the Apple support forums. The OP in that thread also mentioned forwarding 443 with no success.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... ID=1407267

Although this TidBITS post indicates you're already forwarding the right ports.

http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/1660/

And according to another TidBITS listing, this app might be of some use for a "manual" uPnP port forwarding command, so you don't have to have those ports open all the time.

http://www.codingmonkeys.de/portmap/

I'll try that. Do you know if the back to mac tab will light up green when one side can be reached by the mobile me /.mac server or is it when both sides are setup properly? Right now it has a yellow status and giving a nat error.

if everything is working, as in NAT stuff resolved as well as both computers being on, it should definitely turn green.

dolemitecomputers wrote:

I'll try that. Do you know if the back to mac tab will light up green when one side can be reached by the mobile me /.mac server or is it when both sides are setup properly? Right now it has a yellow status and giving a nat error.

The light will turn green when the client computer can reach the .Mac servers successfully.

The ports used for BackToMyMac will vary considerably, so manually forwarding those ports you mentioned above will probably nor work.
You NEED to have a UPNP router on each client end in order to make this work. If the user has a DSL modem with a built in router, try and see if there is a firmware upgrade available for it that adds UPNP. Also, make sure you're not double NATing that DSL modem if you also have a router behind it.. so many times i see users using a router in DHCP mode with a DSL modem instead of having the router in PPPOE mode dial the DSL connection..

Let me know if you need more info,

Adi

P.S. It's good to be back

adisor19 wrote:

dolemitecomputers wrote:

I'll try that. Do you know if the back to mac tab will light up green when one side can be reached by the mobile me /.mac server or is it when both sides are setup properly? Right now it has a yellow status and giving a nat error.

The light will turn green when the client computer can reach the .Mac servers successfully.

The ports used for BackToMyMac will vary considerably, so manually forwarding those ports you mentioned above will probably nor work.
You NEED to have a UPNP router on each client end in order to make this work. If the user has a DSL modem with a built in router, try and see if there is a firmware upgrade available for it that adds UPNP. Also, make sure you're not double NATing that DSL modem if you also have a router behind it.. so many times i see users using a router in DHCP mode with a DSL modem instead of having the router in PPPOE mode dial the DSL connection..

Let me know if you need more info,

Adi

P.S. It's good to be back

The varying ports makes sense as to why they ask for a router that uses NAT PNP or UPNP. I manually forwarded that new port with same results. The only other option is to bridge the modem at both places since I could connect an airport extreme and expresss on both ends.