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Old 8th July 2012
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jggimi jggimi is offline
More noise than signal
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
Posts: 7,977
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Let's level set, because I think you misunderstand the basics. Please forgive me if I provide information you already know, or, if I have misunderstood what you have posted.
  • Each device on your local network has its own IP address. You have four devices: the router, the two workstations, and the printer. Each can communicate directly, with each other. It's a network.
  • Your local network is in the 192.168.*.* block of IP addresses. This set of addresses is a private network, and cannot be used directly on the Internet.
  • Your router has two IP addresses. One is an address on your private network, and the other is an IP address on the Internet. As far as the Internet is concerned, you have a single IP address; nothing on the Internet knows the local IP addresses of your workstations or printer.
  • Your router keeps track of electronic "conversations" between your systems and systems on the Internet. It translates IP addresses in the packets it sends back and forth. I mentioned the technology earlier -- Network Address Translation (NAT).
  • Any "conversations" you initiate need no special handling. Your router knows which workstation initiated the request, and routes packets to the workstation as the converstation takes place.
  • On the other hand, any "conversations" that start on the Internet, for services you might run require router configuration set up. Your router doesn't "know" where those packets should go, since there is no conversation initiated from a device on the local network. For example, if you were to run a web server from your FreeBSD workstation, you would configure your router that incoming packets destined for port 80 should be forwarded to your workstation for processing. Otherwise, the router will reject or drop the packets, it doesn't know where to send them; they were not part of an established conversation.
From what you have posted, it is my understanding that you have configured your router to forward incoming packets destined for port 9100 to your printer. This error is what I noted in my previous post.


Did I misunderstand your configuration?
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