Can't see local webserver w/ wireless router

Hoohah

Registered
Hi everyone. I recently replaced my wired broadband router (MacSense MIH-130) with a wireless broadband router (Netgear MR814). I have an iBook, IBM Thinkpad and G3/350 B&W using it to share DSL, all can access the internet fine.

The G3 is also running as a webserver w/ OS X 10.2.5. With the MacSense router, all the machines were able to access the webserver with its domain name. Now with the Netgear router, they can only get it through the local IP address, 192.168.0.x (or 127.0.0.1 for the machine itself). The G3 isn't wireless but the other two are.

I've made sure to properly forward port 80 to the G3 as I did with the MacSense router. Is there some other configuration with the Netgear that I'm missing?

Thanks for any help.
 
There is a limitation in the Netgear routers that prevents them from being able to properly deal with packets that are destined to an "external" ip, but are port forwarded back internally. If you look on Netgears support site, they mention this. What I do to work around it (and yes, this sucks) is to add entries to my hosts file that has the local ip for the server. Not sure how you do it with OSX though since I hear that it kinda ignores the hosts file. Do a search on this forum to get info on how to use a local hosts file.
 
Thanks for the info bD. I wasn't aware of that limitation with the Netgear. (Maybe that's why it was such a steal?) I'd do the hosts file thing if all I wanted was to be able to type the URL in and get the site locally; I've done it before. But actually I want to make sure that the domain and IP are resolving correctly through the internet. I suppose I'll have to make do with nslookup and asking my friends if they can see it.
 
Actually the Netgears are very nice routers (at least the earlier ones were, I have the MR314, the version before the 814). They have many more features than others like Linksys, but they just happen to have this one very annoying problem (I'm sure they have others, but this one is the one that ends up annoying me the most).

If all you want to do is to make sure everything resolves ok, I believe that you can still ping. I seem to remember this working, give it a try.
 
Well, I'm not knocking it - it really works well otherwise and was a breeze to set up. But I did get it for a lot less than I saw other wireless broadband router/switches going for.

I saw that Netgear has a firmware update for this model. They don't say if it addresses this issue, but I think I'll try it anyway.
 
I meant to mention - ping and nslookup work. So I guess it's alright. Just wishI could get visual confirmation.
 
Back
Top