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Trash Talk - Using ethernet disk over campus LAN

Samapico - Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 pm
Post subject: Using ethernet disk over campus LAN

Ok here's my problem:

My friend just got a LaCie 500GB ethernet disk. The disk is directly connected to his router.
The disk supports file sharing, FTP and HTTP stuff.

We want to both be able to read/write stuff on it. We are technically on a LAN, which is the university residences LAN. However, he uses a router, so technically he is on a separate, sub LAN. Check the attached file for easier understanding of the setup.

The problem is that I can't really see his disk... Is there anyway I could? He tried FTP, but the ftp server is at 192.168.0.254, which is an IP given by his router, so how the hell could I access it?
Any router settings to change? stuff to redirect? I dunno...

To clarify, the campus network doesn't really act as a router, but more like an ISP. I mean we all have individual IP addresses from the point of view of the Internet (i.e. whatsmyip.org gives different ip's for each of us). So for example I could be 142.137.0.1 and his router could be 142.137.0.2.
However, we are connected like if it was a router... I can see some shared folders in my Network folders, we can play games using the LAN option, etc. (Had trouble with some games if he was using his router, though; he often had to connect his computer directly in the wall for it to work)

Dr Brain - Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:44 pm
Post subject:

First point: The campus network is acting as a router, rather than doing NAT, which seems to be what you think a router is. NAT means, for the purposes of my clarification, to hide many internal IPs behind one external IP. His router is a router, it's just doing NAT too. NAT doesn't mean routing.

To make it work, you'll have log in to his "router" and set up port forwarding on FTP and/or HTTP. I've never had much luck making windows file sharing (SMB/CIFS) work across network boundaries.

Port forwarding will route a connection to the external address of his network (his campus IP) to the internal address of his file server (the disk). How depends on the router make and model. It shouldn't be much different from setting up subgame on an internal network, so plenty of people can walk you through the nitty gritty of your particular router if you can't easily find it.

An additional point: you will have absolutely zero security with FTP and HTTP. If it provides a secure HTTP option, go with that (note: usually a different port than HTTP). Campus networks are probably the worst kinds of places to leave unprotected shares, so take every precaution, lest some joker put his warez collection on it and let you two take the blame.

Samapico - Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:47 pm
Post subject:

Ok... I think it almost works... But there's a problem.

We set up port redirecting for FTP to the disk's IP. But to access the ftp directories, we need to type 192.168.0.254//share
Typing only the IP gives you a "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" error (from his computer on the same LAN).
So it didn't work either from my computer.

So I don't know if it's the reason why it doesn't work like we would want it to... Any way to redirect to share?

I attached what we did in the router's settings. The 'virtual servers' things were already there, we just enabled them

Solo Ace - Sat Jan 19, 2008 3:00 am
Post subject:

I got myself this LaCie thing too, I didn't really ever use it yet but I wanted it to keep some files consistent between machines (don't ask me how/why).

Anyway, I didn't really read the first posts, but to reach a FTP server with a webbrowser you'll have to use
ftp://[user[:password]@]host[:port (default=21)]/
so this would probably be something like
ftp://admin:admin@192.168.0.254/share
Because using http://192.168.0.254/ would make IE connect using HTTP...

But for FTP connections I recommend using a client actually made for that purpose, FileZilla would be a good one actually.

Besides, you could try using \\192.168.0.254\share too. Just make sure Windows filesharing (SMB) and FTP is enabled on the LaCie drive.

Cheese - Sat Jan 19, 2008 3:58 am
Post subject:

beat me to ftp://
but that is correct

Samapico - Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:01 pm
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Yeah , 192.168.0.254//share works fine on the computers connected on his router... However, I want to connect to it from outside, using port forwarding.
And we were only able to forward port 21 to '192.168.0.254', we cannot put the //share part there.

Check the attachment in the first post. The disk is on a different LAN

Dr Brain - Sat Jan 19, 2008 1:48 pm
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Try ftp://142.137.../ The // shouldn't be at the end.

Samapico - Sat Jan 19, 2008 2:09 pm
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That's the first thing I tried... But as I said, it redirects to "192.168.0.254". But even from inside, typing ftp://192.168.0.254 doesn't work at all. It needs to be ftp://192.168.0.254//share

I tried ftp://142.137.#.#
I tried ftp://142.137.#.#/share
I tried ftp://142.137.#.#//share

I also tried with http... If I could connect to it with http it would work. But it doesn't either.

'share' is actually a folder on the drive. But the root of the drive doesn't share anything it seems, so we need to put the name of the shared folder.

Dr Brain - Sat Jan 19, 2008 7:13 pm
Post subject:

Sounds like the port forwarding isn't working then.

Cerium - Sun Jan 20, 2008 3:24 pm
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If your university is anything like mine, they block A LOT of stuff. About the only thing that does work outside of my own network is anything that's provided by something off the university's network. Hell, my roommates can't even use the services on my machine(s) if we go through the school network.

Mine GO BOOM - Sun Jan 20, 2008 3:44 pm
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Cerium wrote:

Hell, my roommates can't even use the services on my machine(s) if we go through the school network.

Which is what they should be doing. People are not smart enough to always have firewalls setup correctly, and one virus can quickly wipe out tons of machines. Or someone else can attempt to hack/disrupt someone else on the network.

Samapico - Sun Jan 20, 2008 4:12 pm
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Cerium wrote:

Hmmm yeah the drawing is misleading... we both are inside the campus network. I drawn it as we are connected directly on the campus network. That's why I put the firewall on the drawing, that's where they block everything

Cause yeah, from outside, they do block incoming FTP connections. But I was able to setup a ftp server on my computer that was accessible from anywhere in the school, but not from outside.

CypherJF - Sun Jan 20, 2008 6:37 pm
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My school used packeteer which lets network admins to block/throttle/manipulate packets on the network layer. It was effective at killing... everything on the network (ie: made the network sucktacular), not only p2p/flash traffic which it was intended to do.