A Non-VF question...

I was just visiting the VF4fx page (which is very cool, but this firewall won't let me access IP addresses...damn), when I got to thinking about IP addresses. When you post a link to an IP address, is it directing the visitor directly to your computer, your hard drive? And if so, aside from security issues, what are the pro's/con's of this kind of setup?

I know I probably shouldn't be posting this question on this board, so if someone can direct me to a proper place, I'd appreciate that too. THANX!!

Ultimately, we're all dead men, sadly we cannot choose how, BUT we can decide how we meet that end in order that we are remembered as men.

 

This is a general forum, so anything goes!

The reason why you can't download the movie clips from work is not because you can't access an IP address directly, it's because your firewall is blocking Port 21 (File Transfer Protocol) requests.

Take for example http://www.yahoo.com ... this is (nearly) functionally equivalent to accessing http://216.115.102.77 . I bet you don't have a problem accessing either of them... that's because your firewall has an open Port 80 for HTTP requests.

I am colocating my old PC at the office and running an FTP service on it in order to serve up all the media files available at VF4fx (currently 2.3GB worth of movies and other media). So as not to annoy my coworkers, I limit the bandwidth on the FTP service to 384kbps and 5 clients max (which is why it may be slow at times, but fast on other occasions) so it doesn't sap too much bandwidth from work-related internet usage. But at least it's always on, 24x7...

I *could* conceivably run a webserver instead of an FTP server to serve the media files using port 80 to eliminate the firewall issue you're facing, but then, I'm not a big fan of MS IIS (too many loopholes), and I don't want to reformat my server to use Linux because I run some other voice communication processes on the server as well that require WinNT.

How do you get around the firewall issue? Well, it depends on whether you have access to the firewall config. If it's a work machine... I'm afraid you might be out of luck. But if you're running a home firewall, you can probably gain web or telnet access to your router, and forward Port 21 to the local IP address of your computer (e.g. 192.168.254.1)...

 

Thanks for the info. Looks like my situation here is beyond hope. I can't view any movies for VF4, any movies for Tekken 4. All I can really do is take care of these purchase orders that seem to be piling up on my desk... Hey, wait a minute... You don't suppose that was their plan all along, do you? ....naaahhh!!
=P

Ultimately, we're all dead men, sadly we cannot choose how, BUT we can decide how we meet that end in order that we are remembered as men.

 

feixaq... why not run apache on your NT box? I'm sure you've got a good reason, but just in case, (much) more info here:

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://httpd.apache.org/docs/windows.html>http://httpd.apache.org/docs/windows.html</A>

I wouldn't run IIS either

grib.

 

Thanks for the link! I was always under the impression that Apache webserver ran on Linux (duh). Will check it out later this week when I have a bit more time. Maybe then I can move everything from FTP to HTTP =)