ftp and providers

[marco cochet]

hello wizards,
i have the following question:
i have a ftp server on a c3000 with hp-ux 11.11 .
i also have a acount with the provider telenet cable (from belgium)
there is no problem logging in to my server as long as the remote pc is connected to telenet.
if i use a other provider (i.e. skynet this is adsl) i get a timeout on my connection.
i use the same login in both cases.
i use also a us robotic router.
he is setup to forward ports 20 and 21 tot the ip from my server.
the pings are in both cases less than 40.
must i specify somewhere wich network can access my ftp server?
thanks in advance

[Dagmar Boelen]

Check your inetd.sec file. In this file you can disable logon from certain networks.

[Dagmar Boelen]

try man inetd.sec. A small piece of man inetd.sec is included.

When inetd accepts a connection from a remote system, it checks the address of the host requesting the service against the list of hosts to be allowed or denied access to the specific service (see inetd(1M)). The file inetd.sec allows the system administrator to
control which hosts (or networks in general)are allowed to use the system remotely. This file constitutes an extra layer of security in
addition to the normal checks done by the services. It precedes the security of the servers; that is, a server is not started by the Internet daemon unless the host requesting the service is a valid host according to inetd.sec.

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

If you are running inetd.sec with an ftp allow statement(thereby excluding all other logins), that would explain the behavior.

A lot of US cable providers have similar types of setups to prevent people from running servers in their homes. They'll let you share your machine with other customers(though that is silly and brings about legal concerns) but not anyone outside their network.

They claim their networks can't handle the server traffic because they weren't designed to. Some limit upload bandwidth for the same reasoning.

In general the real reason they do it is so you can't run a server style business out of your home and compete with their web hosting and ftp offering.

The way I got around this was to find a provider that had no such restrictions.

If your cable provider has not set up access restrictions, then comment out any statements in /var/adm/inetd.sec that allow or restrict ftp access. To serve the world, you must accept connections from th world, therefore the line in inetd.sec must go.

You should not have to restart inetd, but in case I'm wrong when done,

inetd -c

Regards,

Hope this is a solution.



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