Reply To: Firewall Rules for Beta Software Server
I’m not Mike, but anyway it may help you to understand:
Regarding the mix servers (and mirrors):
For the mix server and the mirrors, you don’t need a port forwarding at all. Even 388 should work, I think. At least 381 does.
With SoundJack, for every connection one side needs a port forwarding or be able to be directly addressed on the internet (no NAT on that side), but the other end doesn’t need the port forwarding. Since the machines that do the mirror reflections or are the mixing servers are either directly addressable on the internet or have a port forwarding active, neither for mirrors nor for mix servers a port forwarding is needed. Everyone only connects to the server/mirror, so due to the server/mirror end being reachable, the other ends don’t need the port forwarding in their home NAT routers.
But if you want to connect p2p, only one participant that does not have a port forwarding can communicate with all others. If there are two, they cannot connect to each other and therefor cannot hear each other, but they can connect to all others with a port forwarding.
The mirrors do reflect your own signal and nothing else. They are meant to check if the SoundJack SJC and website run and your audio is setup correctly. For testing the sound and network buffer settings, I put some music out, disable the own signal in the left column on the stage and listen to the reflected signal. That way I can hear rather quickly if there are dropouts with a certain setting and find out what works best with minimum latency.
The Mix servers so not reflect your own signal, only the signals of other connected users. So you need someone else to be connected to the Mix Server at the same time to get anything in your headphones. (You need headphones if you are using a microphone, since with a speaker you won’t get the echo of the others back, but the the others get it, just a bit delayed.)
Regarding the NAT identifier and port forwarding:
The middle number is important, but only if it is 8 in contrast to 3/2/1. If you get an 8 in the middle you don’t get the SoundJack UDP-port communication at the the internet side of your router to your computer. That can be no port forwarding at all, a wrong IP or port number in the port forwarding, wrong IP-number selected on stage (if you have LAN and WLAN active at once you might have selected the wrong interface) or the IP-number of your computer has changed due to a new DHCP number distribution.
But if you have 1, 2 or 3 in the middle it just says something about how your computer is reached. This is no practical limitation, regardless of 1, 2 or 3 you get the full SoundJack-connectivity.
Personally I have two cascaded routers (for reasons outside of SoundJack), the first forwards all ports (except VoIP, that gets processed by the first router) to the second one and the second router then is my main router (except for VoIP and provider access). That way, I have an NAT identifier of 321. The 2 is a bit strange because Alex said this would no longer happen, but nonetheless it’s there and it works.
If the first or third digit are different from 1, then the port numbers on the LAN side have been changed by the router, but this change is communicated to the computer and therefor the communication still works. And these changed port numbers will be shown on stage in front of the NAT identifier. Nothing to worry about as long as the middle digit of the NAT identifier is not 8.
BTW, the menaing of the numbers are documented in the FAQ under the headline “port forwarding” (in the last third of the FAQ), only a bit difficult to read, because some spaces and paragraphs are missing that would made it more easy to read.
