Complete Newbie needs help

[JeffCharger]

Don, at the risk of giving you one more set of advice steps.....

I believe that you are attempting to setup essentially what I have done.

I agree with Rupp - start slowly and ignore the Dynamic DNS part at first. If you have HS setup with the web enabled and port assigned, then you can have a friend check to see if they can get access to your HS web setup. To do this, do the following:

1) to check that you have the HS web access setup properly
- in the HS screen, click on the globe in the top window bar. This will bring up the web GUI and will validate that your web setup is working
2) to check access from another computer on your LAN
- on your HS PC, go to a command prompt (where you get the "C:" prompt)
- type in "IPCONFIG /all" and hit enter. This will show the IP address of your HS PC (mine shows as 192.168.2.15)
- on another PC on the LAN, go into explorer and enter "http:/192.168.2.15:80" (in this, replace 192.168.2.15 with your specific IP found, and also replace 80 with whatever port # you setup for HS in the web setup screen
- you should get the same web GUI as in (1)
3) to check access from outside
- find out what your external IP is from outside, by going to the website http://www.whatsmyip.org/
- call a friend on the phone and have him use his browser and enter "http:xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80" (replacing the IP address found from whatsmyip.org and also replacing the 80 with your specified port #

If all this is successful, then you can look at setting something up to handle the dynamic IP stuff. This part will be pretty simple once you establish access from outside.

 

[donl1150]

Looks like I have some good things to try..............but it will have to wait till after my son's wedding tomorrow. I'll give these things a try next week upon my return and let you know how things work out. Thanks for the tips........

Don

 

[donl1150]

Well folks, I survived the wedding............my wallet a lot lighter.

I began working through Jeff's steps. The web access is working properly on the HS pc. I can't get access to the web page from another pc on the LAN however. Any thoughts on this?

don

 

[JeffCharger]

Don, have you turned off ZoneAlarm for the time being? Also, have you turned on enable web access thru the Options > Webserver tab? Do you get a "page not found" message or an "unauthorized" message?

 

[donl1150]

Jeff,

I have turned off ZA and checked to make sure XP firewall is disabled. The message I get when trying to access the HS pc from another one on the LAN is "You are not authorized............."

don

 

[Rupp]

Is it prompting you for a password and username?

 

[donl1150]

Rupp, no...........just an "unauthorized" message. Don

 

[JeffCharger]

Doe the "unauthorized" message have a red banner on it?

 

[Rupp]

Check your Web Server tab settings against this image and see if you have it enabled first and then compare other options.

 

[donl1150]

I am at work now but will check these things when I get home. My recollection is that there is not a red banner. I also don't remember seeing a screen like the one Rupp has posted. Is that screen from HS v1.7? (That is what I am using)

don

 

[Mike]

Is it possible you have the windows web server installed as well and it is essentially conflicting and set in such a way to give you this result?

If under Administrative Tools you go to Computer Management and under Services and Applications you see "Internet Information Services" you may want to check the settings there.

I don't have Homeseer yet (and am guessing they run their own server, which would explain the above), but I think that page sounds like one I have seen from IIS (not positive, but it sounds very familiar).

 

[JeffCharger]

Don, Rupp's screen is from 2.0, but the 1.7 data elements are essentially the same.

They are found in View > Options > Webserver (tab)

Check your settings against the elements in Rupp's attachment and make sure that your port # is the same as what you're trying to connect to.

 

[JohnBullard]

Last night, I configured my router etc, for remote access to HS2. I opened port 80, and my ISP let's me connect (no port 80 blocking).

I can connect from my office just fine today.

My question is, from a security standpoint, should I change from port 80 to some obscure port #? What range of port numbers would typically be less likely to be probed by the bad guys?

(not trying to hijack the thread, just saw an active related discussion by folks with more knowlege then me)

 

[Mike]

If you are looking for obscurity (and some security folks are quite passionate about avoiding security through obscurity, however it's a pretty good bet that port 80 will be scanned...), you might want to try ports above 24000. Won't help against a complete port scan, but most of the limited ones will be below that (unless targetting something specific).

If you look at some of the port scan pages on the net, where they offer to scan you, many will choose a few thousand common ports (either valid or trojan probable) under 24000 or so. Of course, this is no guarantee either.

 

[electron]

I am one of those security guys, but I do agree that 'security through obscurity' can be a useful tool. In this case, many worms scan port 80 to see if they can exploit the webserver. This could cause an additional load on the CPU if there is actually a webserver running on that port, and potentially cause reliability issues, so I would strongly recommend to move it to a port which is very hard to guess and won't be picked up by basic port scans (as Mike mentioned). You can go up to 65535.