Subject: From: Date:

Re: [ECS] Web access Dario Greggio Sat, 01 Jul 2000 15:45:53 +0200

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Don wrote:
> 
> Since you seem to know something about how this works, I'll ask you. I have
> a router on my local lan that uses NAT for addressing, and I have a dynamic
> address at my ISP, although I have a DSL line and it has never changed. I'm
> want to access ECS from a remote computer. How do I come up with an URL for
> ECS?

Thanks Don!
I basically agree with Martin. And it doesn't depend on you having a
static or dynamic IP address or whatever access and provider. It's a
matter of proxy settings.
I can show you what I did in my system, how it's working now with what
we have in Italy (!)

I don't have a 24h connection, so I call "Joshua" (the home system) and
give a code. It hangs up and then connects to a free provider (I only
pay almost 1/3$ per hour... now they are starting with 24h access at
almost 50$/month). My modem is analogic 56K, but I also tried ISDN and
it works a little faster.
Then joshua is given a dynamic IP, so it sends a SMS to my phone whose
text contains the IP address (older way) and also connects via FTP to my
Geocities WEB page and dinamically creates a page with an auto-refresh
link to the given address (new way): it's here
http://www.geocities.com/adpm99/hardsoft/joshualink.html
Joshua listens for connections to port 80, so it's a HTTP server. It
renders a home page and several services (the nicest one is a GIF map
created out of a DXF Autocad file, which dinamically shows lights and
sensors situations, and since it's an HTML Map you can also interact
with it!) More things are yet to came, but I can browse and download my
MP3s, listen to answering machine and get the stored faxes as GIFs. Via
Internet you can do anything.
I tried it through a proxy and it's ok as long as you have access to a
standard site. The IP address given is OK as long as the connections
stays up: it changes every time you connect. After the system is
connected, it will stay online for 5 minutes or more depending on the
requests it gets from clients (and will also show a counter on the WEB
page!). This is for money reasons, but also because the modem and the
line are the same as those for the answering machine.
What is nice is that it's rather fast: with only one client (it's quite
hard that more than ONE client will connect to my home at the same time
:-)) I download at about 4/5 KByte/sec (the modem speed).

What is next...
With an analogic or ISDN 24h connection, they say we will get changing
IPs. With ADSL, they say the same (I didn't try it) (they say it's for
business reasons - everybody would become a provider). So, if I get into
a 24h connection I guess I will check for my given IP address every a
while and if it's changed from the moment before, I'll send notification
to a WEB page or SMS or maybe the client itself (I get the referring IPs
of clients connecting to Joshua). This should work.

I still remark that the proxy matter works as Martin said. But if you
don't move from port 80, anything should be easier.

-- 
Ciao,
Dario
--
ADPM Synthesis sas - Torino
--
http://www.geocities.com/adpm99

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