Hi Folks,

Here I go trying to break the rules again .. or am I?

When I dial-up, my "gateway" machine gets an IP address which I can find out.

So, from outside, I can telnet, ftp etc. to my gateway.

If I want to telnet to one of the machines inside my LAN, I could first telnet to the gateway, and then from there to any of the others. A bit cumbersome, but not a problem.

However, if I want to FTP to one of my internal machines, it's much more cumbersome: first FTP to the gateway, then telnet to the gateway and from there FTP to the desired machine.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of protocol for getting directly to an "internal" machine (whose IP address is not known to the Net) by a kind of "relay" via the gateway (whose external IP address is known to the net).

There's an analogy in Internet mail, whereby you can force mail to aa.bb.cc.dd to be routed via AA.BB.CC.DD, by addressing to

@AA.BB.CC.DD:user@aa.bb.cc.dd

(so-called "routing addresses). So can I, for instance, do something like

telnet @213.130.142.61:192.168.0.7

(where 192.168.0.7 is the address of a machine on my private LAN, and 213.130.142.61 is an IP address my gateway waas recently given on dialup)?

And, similarly, something like

ftp @213.130.142.61:192.168.0.7

??

Or is there a different way to do it? Or no way at all?

When I try the above on my LAN, e.g.

telnet @192.168.0.7:192.168.0.1

I get "Aborted", and

telnet 192.168.0.7:192.168.0.1

gives me

192.168.0.7:192.168.0.1: Unknown host

and similarly "Name or service not known" with FTP, so presumably I've got the details wrong above, if it's possible at all. But you get the idea ...

With thanks, and best wishes to all, Ted.

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