A Trip To The DMZ

DMZ: Demilitarized Zone
- While DMZ stands for demilitarized zone and takes its name from warfare, there is no actual gunfire involved.
- The DMZ is a "zone" on your network that is directly accessible to cmputers outside your own network.
- Items that are DMZ'd could be a stand-alone computer, or an IP-enabled device like a printer or a webcam.
- The key is that even when you grant access to a device on your DMZ, the rest of your network is protected.
- Businesses may use DMZ for email, web servers, FTP, and other services that need to be accessible to the public.
- On a corporate DMZ, however, devices are often located between two firewalls, where as personal DMZ uses only one.
- NAT, or Network Address Translation, assigns your internal network IP addresses that do not exist on the outside network.
- When data arrives fro a computer inside your network, NAT redirects that data to the proper computer inside your network.
- Computer's on the outside of your NAT cannot see the internal IP addresses.
- It won't redirect unrequested data, only data that has been requested from the inside of your network.

Setup DMZ:
Access router configuation
Click advanced button
Select DMZ
Click enable
Set the IP address of the device
Click apply
- By putting a computer onto the DMZ, you are removing the protection that the router's firewall provides.
- Any device you place on the DMZ should therefore never contain sensitive data or backdoors to your network.

To obtain IP address:
Click start
Click run
Type cmd, then enter
Type ipconfig, then enter
Listed with be your IP address
Type exit, then enter
- If you want to make sure that the device you choose to be in the DMZ is always there, some manual config is in order.
- You'll want to set its IP manually instead of using DHCP to obtain an IP address automatically.
- That way you'll have the same IP address every time the device restarts, without manual intervention.

To Set Static IP Address:
Click start
Click control panel
Click network connections
Right click on current connection, then choose properties
Find & click Internet Protocal [TCP/IP], then choose properties
Click on Use the following IP address
Type in the assigned DMZ IP address
Your Default address: 192.168.0.1

- The item you set up on your DMZ will be accessible through the same IP address as your WAN address on the router.

- To access DMZ device in a web broswer type: http://WAN IP ADDRESS