[Freedombox-discuss] What do you use your FBX for?

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012, Rob van der Hoeven <robvanderhoeven at ziggo.nl> wrote:

>>> I have been running a FreedomBox (a QNAP TS-119 NAS running Debian
>>> Squeeze) for 1.5 years now. These are the things i use it for:
>>>
>>> 1) NAS.
>>> 2) 3 * WordPress blog (freedomboxblog.nl, my brothers website and an
>>> experimental website)
>>> 3) Owncloud for sharing stuff with family and friends.
>>>
>>> I also use it to explore the GNUniverse, testing lots of services like
>>> webservers, frameworks, VPN etc.
>>>
>>> Rob.
>>> http://freedomboxblog.nl
>>
>> Your site http://freedomboxblog.nl is available to me by the
>> usual method of telling Firefox to go there and show me the first
>> page.
>>
>> Many people in New York City have a Net connection supplied by
>> Time-Warner Cable.  The cable modem, and Time-Warner Cable's part
>> of the Net, allows most incoming connections, but not all.
>> Usually behind the cable modem, in the house of the Time-Warner
>> Cable customer, there is a "home router".  By default this router
>> allows no incoming connections.  How do you make available
>> http://freedomboxblog.nl?
>>
>
> Incoming connections are blocked by a firewall.
>
> Most cable modems operate in bridged-mode, in this mode both the WAN
> (internet) and the LAN connector on the modem have the same IP address
> and there is no firewall active between the WAN and the LAN connector.
> If your cable modem only has one LAN connector then it's very likely
> that it is operating in bridged-mode. Multiple LAN connectors indicate
> that your cable modem is also a router.

Yes.

>
> For routers you have to enable port-forwarding of port 80
> (HTTP-traffic). Routers have an internal admin-website where you can
> change the settings (see the manual for the details) Note: you can only
> forward a port to a static IP address.

Yes.

>
> My own cable modem operates in bridged-mode so i only had to tell my
> home router to forward port 80 to the IP-address of my FreedomBox. When
> i registered my domainname the provider gave me access to an
> administrator website where i could fill in my WAN (internet) IP
> address. Registering a domainname is very cheap (i pay 4 euro/year).
>
> It is possible that Time-Warner blocks port 80 but i find this highly
> unlikely. Someone else on the list with a Time-Warner Cable connection
> with the same problems?
>
> Rob.
> http://freedomboxblog.nl

I think that by default for most people incoming streams to port
80 are blocked by Time-Warner Cable's part of the Net.  I also
think that outgoing streams on port 25 are blocked.  I have not
checked this recently.  On Verizon's cell phone connection part
of the Net, that is the part which handles "dongle connectors",
which ports are blocked in what directions, varies some, and I
have not checked recently.  What is good for us is that most
ports both directions are open.  It is only the second box,
behind the cable modem, that blocks you and me from doing, say,
'ssh -v -l rob mybox.com', after you get an account on my box.
Every time I have checked, if my home box, that is, mybox, has no
home router between it and the cable modem, everything works just
as it should.  The problem of non-static IP addresses is a
different problem, but near to what I consider the main problem
here, which is: setting up the home users own home lan so that
the user is really fully connected to the Net is today difficult
for most people.

oo--JS.