Dear all,

I have picked up an old showcenter 1000. It works perfectly on my home network. It connects to a linux server running swisscenter.

However it fails to connect to a remote linux server runnning swisscenter.

I have checked that the remote server works by connecting to it with a web browser from muy home network.

My question is simply if it is possible to connect showcenter to a remote server (i.e. not with ip 192.168.x.x) and if so what do I need to do?

regards

P4th

I don't know if the Showcenter 1000 has the concept of a "default route".  (I have a 200, here.)

A "default route" means "if I don't already have a direct route to the host that I'm looking for, send the request to this defined address".  So, if your router is at (say) 192.168.0.1, then your Showcenter's default route would be 192.168.0.1, and anything that isn't on your home network would be sent to your router.

Now, if the Showcenter doesn't *have* a default route, then anything that it doesn't "know" will simply be dropped as nonroutable.  And that means that the Showcenter WON'T be able to access anything outside of its current network.

But like I said, I don't know if this is the case.

If it *does* turn out that this is the case, it *may* be possible for you to do a "port forward" on your router itself to the remote server, e.g. configure the router so that if you talk to the ROUTER on port (say) 8001, it will forward the request to the remote server on port 8001, and replies will likewise be munged so that the replies from the remote server "look like" they are coming from the router.  Not all routers support this sort of configuration, but it's worth mentioning...that way, your Showcenter would THINK that the server was still local, and everything would work itself out.

In theory, anyhow.

BittMann

Thanks for your reply, I'm not quite sure I followed you on the "default route" part, thought all trafic was directed via the router (gateway 192.168.1.1).

But as you write at the end it, should be possible for the router to simulate a computer at, for example, 192.168.1.27 and pick up all trafic bound to that ip and pass it on to my remote server. However I do not know how to do this (I only know how to redirect all incoming trafic from the internet to my showcenter, changing the firewall settings). The router has some settings for static routing and 1-1 nat but I did not get it to do the trick. Not so strange since I dont understand what it is:-) .

 regards

 ps Im not sure about the SC200 but in the the SC1000 you can specify the ip of the server ds

Yes, in the 200 you can also manually set up the IP info (address, netmask, gateway, and IIRC DNS server).  And "default route" and "gateway" mean the same thing:  It means "anything that I don't know where it goes, give it to the gateway and let IT figure it out", so if you are specifying your gateway, then yes, you're doing everything that you should be doing (I think).  So if it's not working...guess I don't know.

One last question:  Are you using a Class C netmask?  (255.255.255.0)?

BittMann

Well, I used DHCP in showcenter to get the settings, the netmask is set to 255.255.255.0.

However, it seems like my isp has a netmask 255.255.240.0 (according to my router). ifconfig on my server reports a mask 255.255.254.0. Not good?

When I try to connect to the remote server I get a  "wake on lan error" asking me to turn on the PC manually. I guess that SC cannot find a "route" to the server.

regards

I don't think your router's netmask is a problem, here...neither do I *think* that your server's netmask is a terrible thing (although it is surprising to me to see that netmask -- basically, it's allowing the low-order bit of the 3rd octet to be zero OR 1, if I'm thinking correctly, for whatever THAT'S worth).

That "wake on LAN" error may be the Showcenter expecting a local ARP for the server...dunno (I'm not all that familiar with the WOL protocol, we don't use it at my office and I've never played with it at home), but long story short -- I still think that there's a way to make this work, but not knowing your system setup, I'm not going to be of much help making it happen, unfortunately.  Sorry. 

It does work!

I'll post the answer myself if somebody wants to do the same thing. My setup:

 A LAN network with a 3com officeconnect router, a showcenter 1000 and a remote server running swisscenter on Linux Gentoo.

Problem: Could not connect to Swisscenter on the remote linux server.

To get it to work I did the following:

In showcenter

1. Added the server manually.

In the router config (192.168.1.1)

1. Direct all traffic coming to your LAN to the showcenter (fix its ip and set this up in Firewall->Virtual Servers)(only port 80 or 8080 should be enough I think)

2. Enable ProxyArp (Advanced->ProxyARP). Only mark the check box, do not enter anything in the fields below (the documentation on this sucks...).

Note: It happens occassionaly that the showcenter fails to connect to the server.

As I understand it the showcenter sends out and (ARP) request to obtain the mac adress of the unit on the specified ip. If it fails the showcenter tells you that wake on lan failed. By enabling ProxyARP the router sends back a mac adress (perhaps a fake one?) and showcenter is happy and connects to the server.

If somebody else have the same problem I hope this can help. Thanks (Bittmann) for taking the time and trying to answer my questions.

 Regards

P4th