{"id":1194,"date":"2010-12-01T02:44:17","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T07:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alsplace.info\/security\/1194\/geek-to-live-how-to-access-a-home-server-behind-a-routerfirewall\/"},"modified":"2010-12-01T03:02:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-01T08:02:44","slug":"geek-to-live-how-to-access-a-home-server-behind-a-routerfirewall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/alsplace.info\/?p=1194","title":{"rendered":"Geek to Live: How to access a home server behind a router\/firewall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

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by Gina Trapani<\/em><\/p>\n

Recent Lifehacker features have covered how to run a personal web server<\/font><\/a> , how to control your home computer from anywhere<\/font><\/a> , and how to set up a personal wiki<\/font><\/a> . For users on a home network with a router installed, home servers are not accessible from the Internet because of many modern routers' built-in firewall.<\/p>\n

Today we'll cover how to open up specific ports on your router to allow access to a home server<\/font><\/a> behind a firewall.<\/p>\n

Please note: this tutorial is for advanced users. Your router's firewall is there to protect you from evildoers who try to control your computer over the Internet. Make sure that any service you expose to the Internet is secured with a strong password.<\/em><\/p>\n

Enabling outside access to an internal computer on a home network requires that you set up NAT – "network address translation," or port forwarding. Forwarding sends requests for ports on the outside of your firewall to the right computer on the inside.<\/p>\n

For instance, someone on the outside requests a page from a web server at your router's IP address. With port forwarding viagra brand cheap<\/a> set up, your router knows to forward requests for port 80 (a web server's default port) to the computer with the web server running only – and none of the others on your network.<\/p>\n

Port forwarding is only necessary when you want to expose a service to computers on the Internet outside your firewall. Some servers you'd want to do that with:<\/p>\n