Re: Setup help

Gary,

> Yes, I have a Speedstream 5871 IDSL router.  I'm using 10.0.0.x
> IP addresses but I don't think that matters.

10.0.0.x addresses are non-routeable - it means you *are* using NAT in your
router. 10.0.0.x addresses are not directly usable on the internet - this
range of IP addresses is for LANs.  Same goes for 192.168.x.x.  Your LAN is
set up correctly, but you need to take a couple extra steps to get SF and
other servers working.

Your router translates your true internet IP (public) address into 10.0.0.x
addresses - this is called NAT or Network Address Translation.  NAT allows
you to share a single public IP address with many machines on your LAN.

Note that your router's public IP may change from time to time if your ISP
uses DHCP, but this is usually transparent to you.

> I have NEVER had to configure the router to
> work with ANY application that accesses the net, including server
> and client apps.

SF is a stand-alone server app that needs to make its TCP/IP and UDP ports
available on the Internet at specific port numbers.  Your other server apps
(if they are in fact true servers) would either need port mapping in your
router or use an outside-your-firewall server to manage port negotiation
with external people trying to connect to you.  You'd have identical
problems if you tried to run an SMTP Email server, Web server, Etc on a
machine on your 10.0.0.x LAN and wanted to make them public.

Port mapping is usually fairly simple in most firewall software or hardware.
Basically you tell the firewall/router to send all incoming port nnn traffic
to machine IP 10.0.0.3, where 10.0.0.3 is your SF machine. Note that you
would need to reconfigure your router if you wanted to use a different
machine for SF, and only one SF machine on your LAN could be online at a
time.

If your existing IDSL router does not support port mapping, then you may
have to connect it to a second firewall/router box that does support port
mapping.  You might also use some firewall/router software in a PC that has
two NICs (network interface cards).  One NIC goes to your IDSL router, and
the other one goes to your LAN. Its probably cheaper to use a dedicated DSL
router like the LinkSys box. LinkSys sells such a box for about $120 USD.

> >From PC2, I can connect and send voice to PC1.  (What does the
> "X" on the ear icon indicate?  It comes up at seemingly random
> times and blocks transmission.)  I still can't get audio into PC1
> so it can't send voice to PC2.

I think you have an audio problem on one of your machines.  As for the ear
icon - I can't help you much, since I am using a hybrid SF that I wrote to
support linking UHF repeater sites together.  My SF audio is gated by
pressing the button on a radio style microphone and I have the icons shut
off.

> On local loopback and connections across the LAN, the remote host
> identifies its protocol and software.  On the echo-back servers,
> they only identify their protocol as "Idle (no encryption)".
> Does that mean I'm not connecting to them properly?

Yes.

> Thanks for all your help!

No problem.

Kevin



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