I'm having a problem creating a shared session with a colleague. The
issue seems to be the internet address. We both connect to the internet
from different places through routers. When OneNote shows me the
address to enter, is shows the internal network address which of course
is not applicable in my case. Any ideas how to enter the correct
address?
It sounds as if you are both behind routers that are doing Network
Address Translation (NAT) in addition to just routing traffic, which is a
common setup. Any time you are trying to communicate directly to a
machine that is behind what is called a NATing router you have to
configure that router to send the traffic to your particular internal IP
address. They do that based on the actual IP port number that is being
used in the packets being sent. You have to configure your router to send
any packet with a particular port number to your particular internal IP
address. Then you just tell the other machine on the other end to send
the packet to the external IP address of the router. The router then
sends it to the configured interal IP address.
This feature is called various things by various router manufacturers.
Some call it port redirection or port forwarding and others call it the
"service list" meaning it is a list of internal IP addresses at which
there will be computers that are offering various "services" indicated by
port number to the internet on the external side of the router. Some only
offer a very generic feature called "De-Militarization Zone" or DMZ where
you can assign one internal computer to which ALL inbound internet
traffic will be sent. This last is a very insecure way of doing it
because it essentially places that one computer directly in contact with
the internet with no protection.
You have to keep in mind that with normal routers you can only assign ONE
internal PC to receive ALL packets with a particular port number in
them. If the port number you need to use is very common and used by many
different things this will mean that that ONE PC will get all that
traffic even if it would be better if another one got some of that
traffic. For instance, If you have a web server behind a router you would
have had to set your router to direct all packets with 8080 or 8000 in
their port number to your web server. However, it is common for many
other programs besides web servers to just use this same port number for
other types of packets. (There are various good and various bad reasons
for doing this.) If you then wanted to have another computer on your
internal network running that other program and listening for packets
from the internet with the same port number in them you would have a
problem. How is the router to know which internal computer to send which
packets to? It can't.
So, all of this highly depends on which IP port number is being used by
OneNote to send those packets back and forth. We're going to have to ask
one of the MS tech people to give us that piece of information. Then you
will need to look up in the manual for your particular router for how to
set up that router to forward those packets to the desired computer on
each end. If you have different brands of routers on each end then each
of you will have to read your own respective manual and figure out how to
set up your own individual router, if it is even possible to do it at
all.
