FTP Problems.

I set up a FTP server on my home computer and I able to connect to it if I use and FTP client (FileZilla and WinSCP). But if I try to connect with a browser I am not able too. I tried pinging my home address from the command prompt on my laptop at school and was unable to do so. I am a little confused at what is going on. Its not a huge deal if I have to use a client, but at the same time it would be nice to be able to use a browser. If anyone has any thing that may help please let me know, thanks.

 

Have you done port forwarding on your router at home? You need to ping public IP address not private IP address such as 192.168.x.x.

 

I know that, I was pining my external ip, I thought that I opened the port, but I am not sure, is there more than one that I should be worried about?

 

First, what is your FTP software? I use only Server 2003/2008 FTP, so I can't tell you about other software. Your school network might block some traffics on the network too, but I think the problem comes from your house network.

How do you test ping on your router? You enable ICMP on your router?

 

I am using the FileZilla server and I'm not sure about the IMCP im not at home so I can't check now.

 

is your ftp server set to accept passive connections? that is what your browser is trying to connect with. either switch off passive connections in your browser or allow passive connections on your ftp server.

 

How would I change the FTP settings in firefox?

 

Not sure if you can. It'd be better to change the settings of the FTP server anyway, especially since you have access to it.

 

To access the FTP by browser try the format:
"ftp://userID [email protected] port# if non-std)/" (The smilely faces are collins).

I would recommend moving the port away from 21, to get away from the hackers. Set a strong password. The reason I say this is that I had hackers from china that was pounding my server relentlessly. I did two things to stop them. One was to block the base subnet they were using. The other was to move the port above the 1024. Since then no ones has found it. Pick a port > 1024, <65535 then have the router do the mapping to your ftp server.

 

Right now I am using 990, because of SSL/TLS, it was my understanding that using this would help with security, let me know if I'm wrong I'm going to change the port anyway when I get home.

 

Anything below 1024 will be found with the snoops, out there running. Just random pick a number, it's for your use only. Use a strong password too. The hackers were using user id from admin to very common names. Then would try 3 times and get locked out, change user ID and go again. I had failed login attempts logged every 3 sec till I killed there access. I was able to back track the IP's to china. My ISP is so fast I never knew they were there, if it wasn't for my SMNP server sending me alerts.

 

Okay I'll do that next time I'm home, does the SSL/TLS do anything or did I misunderstand it?

 

You setup the ftp server like it would be normal (normal port used for SSL/TSL). Then on your router you setup a firewall rule using the port of your choice pointing to the IP address of your ftp server. So when you hit your router you will be redirected to the ftp server ip address. So you still use the ssl/tsl but you will be hitting it with a different port.