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C-Mezak

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 14, 2004
119
0
Edinburgh, Scotland
Hey everybody.

We have our own mailserver in my household, so when I am connected to the household network, I access the mail server at its ip address. However, when I am on the road, I must connect to it via our public url.

I've created two accounts in Mail, one for each server address. This is rather inelegant, though, because I have to go into the preferences, enable one, and disable the other each time that I am newly in or out of the house.

My question is this: Is there a simpler way to go about this?

Im about to move far away for school, so this won't be a problem for long. :) I was just wonderng if there's a solution.

Thanks!
Charlie
 

ephramz

macrumors member
Jan 14, 2004
55
0
Forward the ports

Yep, there's a better way. Just set your router to forward the mailserver ports to the local IP of your mailserver. I believe the port is 25 but double check that.

Then just set your mailserver to be the external URL. From the inside this will go to the router's IP which will forward it to the mailserver's local IP. From the outside it will do pretty much the same thing. Does that make sense? Actually if you can access the mail server from the outside it sounds like it's already set up this way. What happens if you try the outside URL from the inside?
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
ephramz said:
Yep, there's a better way. Just set your router to forward the mailserver ports to the local IP of your mailserver. I believe the port is 25 but double check that.

Then just set your mailserver to be the external URL. From the inside this will go to the router's IP which will forward it to the mailserver's local IP. From the outside it will do pretty much the same thing. Does that make sense? Actually if you can access the mail server from the outside it sounds like it's already set up this way. What happens if you try the outside URL from the inside?

Going along this line, is there any way to force SMTP attempts from a bluetooth modem connection only (or at least not from an 802.11 or wired connection) to a particular SMTP server?
 

varmit

macrumors 68000
Aug 5, 2003
1,830
0
C-Mezak said:
Hey everybody.

We have our own mailserver in my household, so when I am connected to the household network, I access the mail server at its ip address. However, when I am on the road, I must connect to it via our public url.

I've created two accounts in Mail, one for each server address. This is rather inelegant, though, because I have to go into the preferences, enable one, and disable the other each time that I am newly in or out of the house.

My question is this: Is there a simpler way to go about this?

Im about to move far away for school, so this won't be a problem for long. :) I was just wonderng if there's a solution.

Thanks!
Charlie

I'm guessing you are talking about your two accounts and addresses as on the LAN you connect to 192.169.X.X and another assigned by your ISP for outside. Why don't you just connect using the account that has the ISP address. It will just loop back to you.

You could get a domain to be able to access the server from inside and outside the network using the ISPs address. If you don't want to buy one, then use http://www.no-ip.com where you can get a free domain with a .no-ip.com ending.
 

varmit

macrumors 68000
Aug 5, 2003
1,830
0
mkrishnan said:
Going along this line, is there any way to force SMTP attempts from a bluetooth modem connection only (or at least not from an 802.11 or wired connection) to a particular SMTP server?

Usually you set that up on which ever mail app your are using. Such as Mail.app, using a .Mac account connects to smtp.mac.com. Its the App that points to the server, not the modem.
 

C-Mezak

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 14, 2004
119
0
Edinburgh, Scotland
Well either I didnt make myself very clear, or my situation is unique.

My household server is in our garage, and it is through this server that I receive my email. To connect to this server from within my houshold network, I must use its home ip address - 192.168.x.x. To connect to it from outside of my home network, I must use its url - http://www.servername.com. This presents an inconvenience for me as it forces me to manually switch between accounts in the Mail app when I switch between connecting from home and connecting while at work or on the road. I cannot connect via the url from within my household network.

My question is whether or not this is the only way to do it. It probably is, but I was hoping you guys had some tricks up your collective sleeve.

Charlie
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
varmit said:
Usually you set that up on which ever mail app your are using. Such as Mail.app, using a .Mac account connects to smtp.mac.com. Its the App that points to the server, not the modem.

Hmmm...I know I can set different SMTP addresses for different accounts in Mail...is this what you mean? The problem I have, which sounds vaguely similar to the OP's problem, is that at our house we have BellSouth DSL, which rejects all SMTP servers but its own, and on the road I must use other servers because Bellsouth only accepts traffic from within its own network.

Or could I solve my problem just by having my home router redirect the SMTP port traffic to the bellsouth address?
 

varmit

macrumors 68000
Aug 5, 2003
1,830
0
mkrishnan said:
Hmmm...I know I can set different SMTP addresses for different accounts in Mail...is this what you mean? The problem I have, which sounds vaguely similar to the OP's problem, is that at our house we have BellSouth DSL, which rejects all SMTP servers but its own, and on the road I must use other servers because Bellsouth only accepts traffic from within its own network.

Or could I solve my problem just by having my home router redirect the SMTP port traffic to the bellsouth address?

Well, you could try a different port on the SMTP server. Or use the router to change the port as it comes in. In Mail app, you can change the port to something that Bellsouth shouldn't be blocking (say 8080 or something), then the Router changes from the outside port 8080 to port 110 or 25 or the port that is used by your server.

Now if you are saying that all of SMTP requests from outside their network gets blocked from going though from you to your home server, then I would have to ask if Bellsouth is reading your information as it passes though their network.

For the original poster, why doesn't our URL work on the inside network. It should go out to the internet, then get sent right back to the Mail Server. Do you know why it doesn't work.
 

rainman::|:|

macrumors 603
Feb 2, 2002
5,438
2
iowa
Yes, why doesn't the URL work from inside the network? It should resolve just the same. This is how you'll want to accomplish your end goal-- accessing the same URL when on OR off the network. Trying to change it every time is just going to be painful...

paul
 
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