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Rather than pester the very helpful Scott Chamberlain in the comments to this question, I'm moving my issue here.

I'm developing a web app on my work computer (Windows 7), and I've gotten a bug report complaining of bad behavior on the Mac version of Firefox. We don't have a Mac in-house, so I brought in my personal laptop. The trouble is, I can't get it to connect to my work machine.

Both machines are on the local wi-fi network. The work machine has access to a VPN that my personal laptop does not. Any time I try to access 192.168.1.4:8080 (the IPv4 address assigned by the wireless network) from my personal machine's browser, I get nothing. I also get nothing when I ping 192.168.1.4.

My first thought was that it's a firewall issue; I don't have the permissions necessary to simply disable it. I've tried poking holes via "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" (allow incoming access on port 8080, allow incoming access for all programs), but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.

It also occurred to me that my work machine might be invisible on the network. I've tried turning on file sharing and network discovery via "Advanced sharing settings", but that hasn't worked either.

I'm still poking around with rsop.msc as Scott recommended in my other question, but as I've never used the tool before, I'm not completely certain of what I'm looking for. I'm hoping something will jump out at me as I keep digging.

In the meanwhile, what other approaches would people recommend?

Edit: In response to the comments, I double-checked to confirm the Mac is on the same network. It is; it has an IP address of 192.168.1.7, and I can ping it from the work machine.

Edit 2: I suspect that, unless I can track down a sysadmin willing to relax the settings on my machine, I'm simply screwed.

I presumed that, since they're on the same network, the Mac would subject to the "Domain Profile," but more research tells me it's more likely under the purview of "Private Profile." Is that a reasonable conclusion?

The difference is that the Domain overview says "Inbound connections that do not match a rule are blocked", whereas the Private overview says "All inbound connections are blocked". If I'm interpreting this correctly, then any holes I try to poke in the firewall are useless, since they run afoul of this higher-level rule. This would explain the behavior I'm seeing; I can see the Mac from the Windows machine but not vice-versa.

If anybody has any insights that confirm or refute this theory, I'd love to hear them. In the meanwhile, I'm sending "Could I please speak with a sysadmin?" messages to the helpdesk.

Community
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BlairHippo
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3 Answers3

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I'd contact your systems administrator at your work and see if they already have something for this occasion. This also keeps things above board and within your corporate security and policies for access.

mdpc
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I don't understand the 8080 port : WiFi doesn't assign ports, only IP address.

One idea: If the VPN permits it, you could maybe Share the Internet Through an Ethernet Cable From Your PC to Your Mac. This way you create your own network which is not under the control of your network administrator.

Turn off any firewall on the Mac just in case.

harrymc
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Obviously there are only two possible issues here:

  1. Your Windows 7 PC has it's firewall turned on (very likely) and you will need to allow the port through the Windows firewall
  2. Your Application Server could be bound to localhost or 127.0.0.1 only and in this case you'll need to change it to listen to 0.0.0.0

You can verify (2) by either

  • test if 192.168.1.4:8080 responds on your work machine (sometimes it's a habit to just use localhost:8080)
  • much better: open a command prompt (Win+R, type cmd) and run netstat -nap TCP - you should see at least one line where under "Local Address" you have "something:8080" and under "State" "LISTENING" - if something is not 0.0.0.0 or 192.168.1.4, then the IP binding is your primary problem.

P.S.: Under Windows, repsones to ICMP packets are by default turned off, so your ping from the Mac won't work even with the firewall turned off. The fact that you can ping the other way means that it's not a network issue at all.

Stefan Seidel
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