Connecting to your Home Network

Introduction to Port Forwarding.
Turn on the server on your Mac.
Open your Mac's firewall for that server's port.
Give your Mac an appropriate static IP Address on your Router's sub-network.
Set up your Router to pass external access requests to the Mac running the server (Port Forwarding.)
Determine your external IP Address for use out on the internet.
Connecting to your home File Server from the Internet.

Connecting to your Home Network

Now that you've turned on your Mac Server, set the router to forward external connection requests to the server, and determined your home's Public IP Address, you should be able to connect to that server from anywhere you have a Mac connected to the internet.

You can verify if your server port is open with a test service such as Shields Up! or Can you see me. (Note: If you are setting up a Web Server, your ISP may block port 80, and so it won't work. If it doesn't show open on the Shields Up! test, double-check your settings. If necessary, you can change the port your web server users. Click here.)

The way you connect to that server depends on which of the Mac's servers you are running. For example:

Apple Personal File Sharing
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
Web Sharing

Apple Personal File Sharing

To connect to your Mac server to mount a volume using Personal File Sharing:

Select Connect to Server from Finder's Go menu.

Unlike when you are at home on your own LAN, the server won't show up on the list of servers. Enter the string "afp://" in the "Address:" box, followed by the External/Public IP Address of your home network, e.g. afp://66.167.43.161

After a painful delay, you should be prompted for a user name and password. Enter a short user name that exists on your home server's Mac, and give that account's password. After another delay, the server's Public folder should mount on your desktop.

Congratulations!

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

To connect to your Mac FTP server to mount a volume using FTP, you have a choice. You can use an FTP client, such as RBrowser Lite

The Mac Finder offers read-only FTP access to FTP sites, including your own. Select Connect to Server from Finder's Go menu.

Enter the string "ftp://" in the "Address:" box, followed by the External/Public IP Address of your home network, e.g. ftp://66.167.43.161

After a delay, you should be prompted for a user name and password. Enter a short user name that exists on your home server's Mac, and give that account's password. After another delay, the server's volume should mount on your desktop.

Most browsers, including Safari and Internet Explorer, offer read-only FTP access to FTP sites, including your own. This applies to Windows users as well as, so it's an easy way to share files with them, too, using a tool you know they have. Users can either browser the file system (by accessing a directory) or download a specific file.

Enter the URL "ftp://" in the address bar (instead of the usual http://) followed by the External/Public IP Address of your home network, e.g. ftp://66.167.43.161

After a delay, you should be prompted for a user name and password. Enter a short user name that exists on your home server's Mac, and give that user's password. (Just leave the "Account" field blank.) The account name you enter determines the Home folder that will be accessed.

The account name you select determines the home directory that is used when determining the directory or file accessed. E.g. When I specify "http://66.167.43.161/Public/filetodownload.doc" and log in as user "car1son", IE downloads the file filetodownload.doc from folder /Users/car1son/Public/

You can use this to eMail people links to files you want them to download, too. Most eMail programs will let them just click on that link and download the file. (Note that they could, if they wished, use the same usename, password and URL to access any other files you have under that account, so don't put files you don't want them to see in an account you give them the password to, and don't use your own account for the password to send them!

Web Sharing

If you are running the Mac's persona Websharing, other's access your webpage(s) using a URL such as "http://66.167.43.161/~car1son/index.html".

This will actually access the web page index.html in the Sites folder of user "car1son".

Security Reminder

Many of these servers, such as Personal File Sharing and FTP, allow people to log into your computer and access whatever files the account that user has access to. They could both read your files, delete them, or write you new files. Since not everyone on the Internet is your friend, be sure to have good, hard-to-guess passwords on all your accounts so someone doesn't give you a nasty surprise. If you are sharing files with others via Personal File Sharing or FTP, create a new non-administrator Account (System Preferences / Accounts pane) for them to use when download or uploading files. Don't be a victim of a hacker.

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