Topic: 2 servers behind one router

[HanKDanK]

Since the IP is the same for my desktop and laptop Im curious as to how this can be setup to be sure someone logs into the correct machine.  I have one setup on my desktop, but if I have files I want to share on my laptop is it as easy as just forwarding another port other then 21 to my laptop and having them login to that port?  and, will it need a different pasv port range than the desktop server?  

just want to ask first before I have people on the other end put up with testing for me.  thanks!

-Hank

[nic]

not gonna work unless you also forward the servers IP address, not just port #'s

[dklein]

is it as easy as just forwarding another port other then 21 to my laptop and having them login to that port?  and, will it need a different pasv port range than the desktop server?  

For standard PORT, you need 20 and 21 on your router to be forwarded to 20/21 on your laptop.  For PASV, you need 21 and some range that has to be specified in both your router NAT and on your ftp server.  Sounds like you know that.  Now because you're behind a router, the ftp server needs to know the external IP (in a PASV connection, your server tells the client where to come in).

Not all server software is equipped for PASV behind a firewall.  Check that first.  If it is supported and you're on a dynamic IP from your ISP, you can generally use a dns alias kind of service and then just specify your IP by name, allowing the server to do the look up so you don't have to change the IP in the server setup everytime your IP changes.

To answer your question, you can do it two ways.
1) set up the server the same way on both machines and use your router NAT forwarding to determine which machine gets the ports forwarded to it

2) set up the servers on different ports, each with their own set forwarded to the appropriate machine.  So you might log into port 21 for the desktop and port 6445 for the laptop.

And if you want to support PORT as well, don't forget to forward port 20 (or port x-1, where x is the port used for connection).

make sense?  

[Brian Skalinder]

Good posts so far.  There's a third option as well if your laptop and desktop are on the same home network.  Simply create a share on the laptop directory from which you want to host files.  Then map the desktop machine to the laptop's share.

[HanKDanK]

Ill play with it this weekend and see how it works. thanks so much for the input!

-Hank

[dklein]

Good posts so far.  There's a third option as well if your laptop and desktop are on the same home network.  Simply create a share on the laptop directory from which you want to host files.  Then map the desktop machine to the laptop's share.

Maybe I misunderstood.  If you're just moving files from one machine to the other, sharing directories is definitely the way to go.

For some reason I thought you were trying to run ftp servers on both machines that were accessible from the outside.  You can still use ftp internally but forget all that complicated stuff - just use standard ports.  No need to open up anything on the router  - just use the subnet IPs (the 192.168.x.x that your router assigns to each machine).  You can do both PORT and PASV.

[Brian Skalinder]

I think you understood correctly, David, I just threw a twist into it so he doesn't have to run two servers.  IME, the bandwidth incurred in my suggestion across a 100MB network will be neglible on network performance due to the (likely) severe upload caps from his ISP .  Just seemed like a viable alternative solution to me, instead of running two different servers.

[HanKDanK]

Yeah, I have sending files to my desktop to host, just that it only has 10GB of memory so im limited to how much goes on there, and im lazy and would love to skip that step, and also curious as to how it could be done.