

(Clicking on Update restarts the router, disconnecting all users for up to a minute.) If it isn’t, check it and then click on Update in the lower right.

Enable NAT Port Mapping Protocol should be checked. Click on the Internet button, and select the NAT tab.
#SKYPE FOR MAC 10.5.4 MANUAL#
To check if it’s turned on, fire up AirPort Utility (Applications:Utilities), select your base station, and click on the Manual Setup button at the bottom. Network Address Translation-Port Mapping Protocol (NAT-PMP) is found only in Apple AirPort base stations released in 2003 or later. The BtMM system on one computer passes those port numbers via MobileMe to any other BtMM system so that any two BtMM-enabled computers using your MobileMe account can communicate with each other.Īutomatic port mapping comes in two forms. (A port is to an IP address as an apartment number is to an apartment building.) Back to My Mac needs to be able to ask your router to open up a port on the router’s public IP address side. Ports are like individually numbered cubbyholes within an IP address assigned to a computer or other device, such as your router. The second requirement is automatic port mapping. If your computer has its own publicly reachable IP address, your router doesn’t factor into the equation, and BtMM will work just fine. Some ISPs will provide such an address for free, others charge for it. If you don’t have a publicly reachable IP address, you can request one. If your router’s address is assigned by DHCP, launch AirPort Utility, select your router, click Manual Setup, and then click on the Internet icon to find the address assigned next to IP Address again, if it doesn’t start with 10, 192, or 174, it’s probably public.įailing those two steps, the only reliable way to find out is to check with your ISP.

If your ISP assigned you an address for your router that must be entered manually, and it doesn’t start with 10, 192, or 174, it’s likely a public IP address. This keeps interlopers from easily accessing your computers, but you’re also blocked when you want to reach your machines remotely.įinding out whether or not your router has a publicly reachable IP address can be tricky. Computers using private addresses can make requests to the larger world, such as a Web browser requesting a Web page, but they’re generally unreachable from the outside in-just as if they were behind a firewall. Unfortunately, many Internet service providers (ISPs) assign only private addresses. A publicly accessible IP address is one that any computer on the Internet can reach, not just machines within a local area network (LAN).
