Retorspect and MAC Airport

[Maniac]

Hello,

 

 

 

I searched the forums and found several posts addressing this issue, but none of the solutions offered worked for me.

 

 

 

Here's my situation:

 

 

 

I have a small network, 3 MACs (OS X - one of them via Airport Base Station) and one WIN 98 hooked up to a router to a Cable Modem. The router assigns IPs to all the machines (and Base Station) automaticlally.

 

 

 

The Airport is assigned the ip 192.168.2.23 and the airport in turn assigns the ip 10.0.1.4 to the mac equipped with the airport card.

 

 

 

All of the machines (with the exception of the Retrospect host) have retrospect clients installed. Retrospect recognizes all of the clients except the one connected via the Airport Base Station. It does however, see the machine in the network pane of the client window.

 

 

 

I cannot connect to the airport equipped mac to activate the retrospect client or perform a back-up. I have tried to map port 497 to the airport assigned IP with no success.

 

 

 

Anyone have any other ideas or recommendations?

 

 

 

Thanks in advance

[AmyJ]

From the Knowledgebasecolor=blue>

 

 

 

Does Retrospect work with WLAN, WiFi, 802.11b, Airport, or Wireless LANs?

 

 

 

People often want to use Retrospect with wireless networking. Fortunately, in many configurations this is fully supported. In some configurations, however, Retrospect cannot access client computers that are connected to the network via a wireless interface.

 

 

 

The quick answer is that if your wireless users either have fixed non-shared IP address or get their IP addresses from a DHCP server on your non-wireless LAN, then Retrospect will work seamlessly with your wireless clients. In other words, wireless networking is just like other hard-wired networking, if you have a non-shared IP address and can access all normal network functions.

 

 

 

If you are using network address translation (usually called NAT) on your wireless client computers, Retrospect will not be able to back them up using Retrospect client software by default. There is a way to get Retrospect to access a single client per IP address if wireless clients are sharing an IP address by configuration only one of the clients using port mapping. For Macintosh users this workaround is described below for Macintosh Airport networking. The process will be quite similar with any other wireless networking software, Macintosh or Windows.

 

 

 

Instructions for enabling a single Macintosh client's use of Retrospect Client software in a NAT (shared IP address) environment:

 

 

 

1. Pick the client for which you want to enable wireless networking access using the Retrospect Client software.

 

2. On the client machine (that is, the computer with the wireless networking connection) look at the TCP/IP address assigned to the system.

 

3. Start the Airport Admin Utility, select the Airport module and click Configure.

 

4. Select the Network tab and then click the Port Mapping button. Some Airport base station models have a separate Port Mapping tab for this function.

 

5. Click Add, and fill in the following information:

 

Public Port: 497

 

Private IP Address: Enter the address from step 1 above

 

Private Port: 497

 

6. Click OK and then Done to get back to the Update tab. Click Update to force the Airport module to reconfigure itself. Quit the Admin program.

 

7. In Retrospect on the backup computer, add this computer using Add by Address, using the address noted in step 1. Retrospect will now be able to access the one client you configured, even though that IP address is shared among multiple wireless computers.

 

 

 

Remember: this workaround can only be done for one computer on the NAT.

 

 

 

Another simple workaround is to have a backup machine for all of the computers on the NAT that also gets its IP address from the NAT. This backup computer can get an IP address wirelessly, or the Wireless Access Point can distribute IP addresses on the LAN as well. If the backup computer is also using NAT addressing within the same wireless group, it can back up more than one client on that NAT.

[Maniac]

As mentioned in my earlier post, I tried this option from the knowledge base, and, when I select the client (adding by address) from the configure window of retrospect I get "Clent not visible on network" error.

 

 

 

The port mapping did not work. Any other solutions?

[chengarinos]

I experience the exact same thing. My Retrospect Workgroup 5.0 is unable to open the initial connection to the pBook G3! I see the computer 'dimmed' in the configure clients network window; however, it never connects (error 1028). However, a windows laptop (WinXP) using the same airport connects just fine.

 

And, I'm not using any NAT things. My airport merely passes all activity to the LAN's router: DHCP and such.

 

tim

[AmyJ]

Quote:

---

As mentioned in my earlier post, I tried this option from the knowledge base, and, when I select the client (adding by address) from the configure window of retrospect I get "Clent not visible on network" error.

 

---

 

For testing purposes, try a wired connection to see if network related.

[chengarinos]

I just got mine to work! It's not AirPort's fault!!!

 

If you DISABLE FIREWALL on the client, then it will work. However, if you are on LAN, then the firewall doesn't seem to affect it directly ... though there are still some 'wierd no client' things every so often. So, FIREWALL is the incompatibility.

 

It seems that Retrospect can not connect to clients using the MacOS X firewall over 802.11b.

 

I hope Dantz addresses this soon. Firewall is an important part of 'security' nowadays. Disabling it to get a machine backed-up isn't a good near-term solution.

 

It bears witness to say that I do not have a problem connecting to WinXP clients (from the same server) connecting over 802.11b (apple's airport station) with firewall without problems.

 

tim

[AmyJ]

To backup any Retrospect client, your networking hardware MUST have port 497 open for both TCP and UDP packets.

 

You don't have to disable your entire Firewall - you only need to open Port 497. Opening ports (allowing access in a Firewall) is standard proceedure for any network application.