LAVA Ether Link Manager & Firewalls
admin > 04-09-2012, 01:09 PM
Enabling Access to the LAVA Ether-Link Manager
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If you ARE ABLE to verify network connectivity to your Ether-Serial Link (either through being able to PING the device, or to open the device's interface in a web browser), but are UNABLE to see the device in the LAVA Ether Link Manager application, you most likely are dealing with a firewall that is blocking access. (Note: a second possibility for difficulty in accessing the Ether-Serial Link using the LAVA Ether-Link Manager could be that a newer driver has been installed over an older driver. In this case, uninstall both drivers, restart the system, and reinstall the newest driver).
This difficulty results because the LAVA Ether Link Manager detects LAVA Ether Serial Links using the UDP protocol, not the TCP that is used with PING or a web browser.
To quickly verify that a firewall is indeed the blockage, temporarily turn off your firewall and attempt to connect using the LAVA Ether Link Manager. If you can, then re-enable your firewall and make a specific exception in the firewall permissions to allow the LAVA Ether Link Manager to talk to the LAVA Ether-Serial Link.
Note that a couple of complications can arise: first, some firewalls will repeatedly turn themselves on even when they have been turned off by a user. For this reason, as well as for general security, LAVA does not recommend turning off a firewall as a long-term solution to enabling LAVA Ether-Link Manager access to a LAVA Ether-Serial Link.
Second, it is sometimes the case that a system has dual firewalls active, as for example when a Windows firewall is active, and a second firewall has been put in place by an antivirus package. In cases of more than one firewall, blockages created by all firewalls will need to be cleared for access to occur.
When configuring firewalls, the following information may be useful:
The LAVA Ether-Serial Link driver uses the following ports:
4099 for UDP (during driver setup; this port is fixed)
4098 for COM port 1 (this is a configurable default)
4097 for COM port 2 (this is a configurable default)
4096 for COM port 3, etc., all configurable
The LAVA Ether Link Manager application uses the following:
port 4101 for UDP detection of LAVA Ether-Serial Links
broadcasts to a destination IP address (to the LAVA Ether-Serial Link)
use of directed MAC addresses (again, to the LAVA Ether-Serial Link)
Once connection is established using the LAVA Ether Link Manager, COM ports can be activated. Please note that the LAVA Ether Link Manager must be run with Windows "Administrator" permissions to activate ports, although they will be visible in the Manager with non-administrative permissions.
If for some reason configuring the firewall is not working to enable the LAVA Ether Link Manger to access an Ether-Serial Link and activate its ports, or if the firewall cannot be adjusted, ports can nonetheless be activated using the LAVA Ether-Link Manager's WAN Activation feature.