One of the nice things about the Airport Extreme Base Station is the Airport Utility application used to manage it. Most other routers these days are managed with a web interface which can sometimes be a little wonky. So it was with some interest that I discovered Port Map, from the Coding Monkeys of SubEthaEdit fame.
Port Map is not a full-fledged management application, but it does bring Cocoa lickability to one standard management task: port mapping, an essential task for iChat or Back to my Mac. If your router supports UPnP / NAT-PNP Port Map provides an iPhone-esque Ui for setting up specific ports, including "presets and URL templates." You can see it working above with my DD-WRT Linksys router (don't worry, I turned it off after the screenshot).
Port Map is a free download from The Coding Monkeys. They've also open-sourced some of the coding goodness that makes this possible and created a framework available to other developers on a Google Code page.
Thanks constantin!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-21-2008 @ 10:55AM
Kryptinite said...
Can I use this to stream content to my PS3 for free? I know the other option but I've already bought Connect360 for the Xbox.
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 11:40AM
Dan Dickinson said...
There's multiple portions to the UPnP spec; this is the port mapping part, not the media sharing part.
So, no.
4-21-2008 @ 11:52AM
Kryptinite said...
Gotcha, thanks :)
4-21-2008 @ 11:27AM
DSeaver said...
Isn't it usually a bad idea to have UPnP on since it could create security problems? If i am wrong, please enlighten me
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 11:33AM
mingistech said...
Everything has an associated risk when you're connected to the internet... you just have to way the benefits to it's potential vulnerabilities. Sure there are UPnP exploits out there... but they are few and far between.
4-21-2008 @ 12:17PM
Allan said...
I can see how this would be a great benefit for using the web interfaced routers. Thankfully my Airport Express is decent without this... but boy do I wish I had something like this back when I had my Netgear or working with my aunt/uncle's Belkin. Bleh...
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 12:17PM
George said...
I asked this on an "Ask TUAW" post a while back, but here goes again: What if I need to set up iChat (and/or BTMM) with two different Macs behind the Firewall? If the ports are forwarded, then only one machine can use these services, which seems a bit crazy. How exactly is this done with two Macs?
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 12:25PM
blinkcowz182 said...
What router do you have? All the routers I've come across didn't need ports forwarded for iChat video chat to work.
4-21-2008 @ 12:33PM
George said...
I have a Netgear WGR614. The odd thing is that at times, no probs with iChat; other times, no dice. My real question was for the suggestion above (in the article itself) to forward ports for iChat - AFAIK forwarding can only be forwarded to one IP address.
And BTMM seems to be working, although verrrrrrry slow, and I have used it via VNC app SpyMe with very decent speeds. I think Apple still needs to work on BTTM.
4-21-2008 @ 12:47PM
fabianjaeger said...
I am more interested in those nice new slider buttons. Does anybody know if there is any available piece of code that creates those sliders? Would be really great to see them in more software projects...
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 10:10PM
Ed said...
I'm no coder, but it's in the OS and I've seen it in other apps so it's probably somewhere in xcode.
4-21-2008 @ 1:18PM
tim said...
my problem with the AirPort Utility is that it has to reboot after every change! even when setting up port forwarding. its insane that i have to lose all of my connections to make simple changes.
or am i doing it wrong?
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 1:18PM
tim said...
my problem with the AirPort Utility is that it has to reboot after every change! even when setting up port forwarding. its insane that i have to lose all of my connections to make simple changes.
or am i doing it wrong?
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 1:19PM
tim said...
my problem with the AirPort Utility is that it has to reboot after every change! even when setting up port forwarding. its insane that i have to lose all of my connections to make simple changes.
or am i doing it wrong?
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 1:20PM
tim said...
OH MAN! my comment didnt work the first time...or so i thought. and i dont even know why it happened a 3rd time! sorry everyone
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 1:48PM
Johnny said...
You can change every aspect of the configuration and only restart once, or you can make one small change and restart once. This is true of every router I've ever used. I've never had a problem with everything reconnecting after a restart. Just don't restart in the middle of a download/stream.
4-21-2008 @ 2:12PM
tim said...
@johnny -
ive never had a router that required a reboot for things like port forwarding. my last router was the linksys wrt54g and you would just set the params, and click save.
i am always working in SSH or something similar, so i constantly have connections open and with the reboot time of the APExtreme it times out all of those connections.
i dont even remember having to reboot every time i made a change on cisco routers back in the day
4-21-2008 @ 2:40PM
Jeffrey said...
It would be nice if this thing can run from the menu bar.
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 2:48PM
badtzmaru said...
OK so maybe this is a BIG request ... but can someone make an Airport Utility app for the iPhone ... please? Pretty please?
Reply
4-21-2008 @ 3:47PM
Alexander Krumeich said...
Looks like a promising app. I'd love to see an iChat preset, though. And please display the protocol type (TCP/UDP) in the main window [comment based on version 1.0 (5)].
Reply