Hey, sure I'd be glad to explain. Below are listed the necessary steps.
1. Prep -
First off you need to open up a clear path to the ports your trying to use, namely ports 21 and your PASV ports. (which is left up to your discretion)
To do this we need to configure your router. Now I am going to assume you DO NOT have a software firewall or any other port blocking apps. If you do have these apps on or installed I recommend you either turn them off or uninstall them now to save us a bit of a headache, (i.e., Zonealarm, Windows Xp Firewall) to make things a bit easier while we try to get this FTP up and running.
Second thing we are going to do is double check our network setup. (make sure everything is plugged in
)
2. Configuring your Router –
Some routers come with configuration applications but like mine (Linksys Wireless Access Point Router, model BEFW11S4) it only has built in software. How do you access the built in software on your router? Well the best thing to do is look in your manual and see where the hell it could possibly be, but to access mine you need to know the Gateway address and the default password.
To get your Gateway address just use the RUN command in the start menu type: “Command”, then while inside DOS type “ipconfig /all”. Look for the numerical values beside “Default Gateway” (check out the screen shot if you are confused)
Screenshot 1
Now that we have that we can access the built in routing software. While in your favourite webbrowser (Opera, Internet Explorer) type
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (with the x’s being the values told to you by ipconfig, i.e.
http://192.168.1.1 for me) A password dialogue will probably pop up. Now this could be a problem if you can’t figure out the default password, but after I had finished panicking I looked in my manual and it told me exactly what to do, just leave the user name blank and type "admin” for the default password. Yours might be a bit different, consult your manual as necessary. (BTW, you should take note as to what your “IP Address” is since that is the PVN IP your going to be inputting for all your configurations inside the router software, NOT YOUR ACTUAL IP)
Once you’re in, the software should look something like the screen shot below. First off we need to configure the “Port Forwarding” options; and configure it in a similar way as mine shows. The PASV ports are up to you, but I chose to use very high digit ones so as to not cause any conflicts with other apps trying to use low value ports. The difference between the first and second values determines the number of PASV connections allowed to your FTP server. I chose to use 49 connections. You also need to open up the FTP port and allow file transfer, see the second screen shot if you are confused as to what I mean.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
3. Configuring ServU -
Now I am just going to assume you know how to setup a Default FTP server and a user account. To make things easier though I would use an Anonymous user account so we can have a simple path to test the server. To configure ServU just follow the screenshots posted below, the areas in red are the important values.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
4. Using dynamic DNS -
Well technically you could just use your local IP assigned by your DHCP to get on your FTP but if you wanted to link or share your server easily with people telling them your new IP every few hours MIGHT just get a bit annoying. So if you do use a forwarding website such as
www.no-ip.com (which I use) you can just link to that and when your new IP comes around just update the site info instead of everything else you would have had to. See screenshot to be clear, I made a specific group so I could update easily by just inputting my new IP.
Screenshot 1
Now that all this is finished you should now be able to access your FTP. (it got a bit rushed at the end but I am in a hurry, just ask if you have any questions)