Is it possible to map ports in Netware 5 to support applications such as Microsoft Net Meeting or Dial Pad or any Remote control applications such as pcANywhere. If anyone can point me to a good reference or has the answers themselves it would be greatly appreciated.
THanks,
JJ

NAT is a standard TCP/IP protocol as specified in RFC 1631. Most Cisco routers also include NAT as a option. Soooo..., NAT's primary job is to convert a "bunch" of IP addresses on one side of the router to a single IP address on the other side.

Typically, one side of the router is our local LAN with private IP addresses and the other side points to the Internet with a single public IP address. The Internet only sees the single IP address while the local LAN can be literally thousands of users. (The State of Michigan is a big NAT user. Many of their agencies use the private address of 10.x.y.z as the local IP address with a single registered IP address on the Internet side).

It really doesn't matter if you are using a Cisco router or a NetWare 5 router for NAT. To answer your question, most communication software is unaware of the translation.

So how do I use pcANywhere from my computer at home on the internet to control my desktop sitting inside my private lan at work? My Netware 5 server is providing NAT , it has 1 public ip address. My private lan has many workstations, one of which is my desktop with a 192.168.x.x type ip. If I set up my work desktop to be a host so that I can remotely control it from home, I still need to tell my server how to translate a request initiated from the public side where to go on the private side.

JJStew -
while it may be possible to come through your NAT with PCAW to run your desktop, I do NOT recommend it - if you can do it, so can somebody else who likes to dig around! IMHO a modem dial-in would be much better from a security viewpoint.

Fred Wagner
frwagne@ci.long-beach.ca.us

Also, NAT builds a table for those private address users so the returning packet from the Internet can be directed to the correct workstation. This, in effect, is a firewall preventing those from the public side accessing the private numbers.

Now you can set up static NAT, assign another public address via the "ADD SECONDARY IPADDRESS <ip addr>" command and tie that new IP address to your workstation. Then you can access your workstation from home....