Using TZO with NAT Network Address

Translation (NAT) devices

You can use TZO with NAT Network Address Translation (NAT) devices and software. Examples of NAT devices are most modern routers with built in switching, Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS), and Linux based routers.

With NAT, there are a few issues to be aware of.

Updating your IP address

TZO supplied ddns clients will operate behind a NAT router without any problems.

If your ISP impliments transparent web proxy/caching, some TZO clients can be fooled about your IP address (see TZO Knowledge Base for solutions). The TZO clients for Windows and the TZO client for GNOME desktop use non-HTTP traffic and so avoid HTTP caching issues.

Forwarding incoming traffic through NAT

The best advice we can offer is to configure and test your port forwarding (or firewalling) using only your IP address. IP based testing is a more simple testcase, allowing you to focus on core networking issues which need your attention first.

For example, you purchased TZO so you can run Apache webserver, and the website does not work when you type in your domain name. Instead, have friends attempt to connect from outside your LAN using your WAN IP address. If that test is not successful, you have a core networking problem to solve. (Most problems of this type are to do with no or improper port-forwarding on the router, or the router is OK but the server has a firewall which blocks the traffic.