internal IP exposed

have a p2p wireless network

internal IP is exosed apparantly, it was shown on a website offering a
product to solve the problem

since i dont particularly wanna spend money on anything (lol) i thought
maybe someone here could give advice.

i am using my PC as a ICS gateway and logging on with my laptop in the
living room

the laptop IP this time around is

192.168.0.63

it is aquired automatically when i log onto the wireless network

so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
router with NAT?

at the min my pc logs onto the net via a usb adsl modem

i have been considering a router for ages now but never have the odd 30 quid
spare (im a student and have 0 pounds)

so if there is a solution within windows that can be executed to hide my
internal IP addresses then can someone please point me to a web page article
or provide me with the relvant information?

I would much appreciate some help

Thanks (in advance)

chris




Christo

"Christo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> have a p2p wireless network
>
> internal IP is exosed apparantly, it was shown on a website

Really? Which website?

> offering a product to solve the problem

That presupposes it is a problem. What is the product?

[snip]
> so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
> router with NAT?

My guess would be that the website sought to mislead, a router wouldn't
change anything, or both. In any case there's no problem that I'm aware of.

Alex

Christo wrote:
> have a p2p wireless network
>
> internal IP is exosed apparantly, it was shown on a website offering a
> product to solve the problem

Any website can pick up your local IP, it's a simple HTML trick. there's
no problem to solve.

> since i dont particularly wanna spend money on anything (lol) i thought
> maybe someone here could give advice.
>
> i am using my PC as a ICS gateway and logging on with my laptop in the
> living room
>
> the laptop IP this time around is
>
> 192.168.0.63
>
> it is aquired automatically when i log onto the wireless network
>
> so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
> router with NAT?

First of all, the address is already "hidden" as far as being able to
see it from the outside world (The ICS gateway sees to that), although
even if it someone did find your local IP address, they wouldn't be able
to do anything with it.

> at the min my pc logs onto the net via a usb adsl modem
>
> i have been considering a router for ages now but never have the odd 30 quid
> spare (im a student and have 0 pounds)
>
> so if there is a solution within windows that can be executed to hide my
> internal IP addresses then can someone please point me to a web page article
> or provide me with the relvant information?
>
> I would much appreciate some help

All you need is a decent firewall and an up-to-date virus checker on all
your PCs, and periodically check that you have the latest security
patches for Windows (assuming you have Windows) that should keep your PC
about as secure as is reasonably possible without spending any money.

Also use common sense when opening up e-mail attachments and don't let
websites trick you into installing dodgy plugins.


--
Ben Cottrell AKA Bench

When Internet Explorer opens a webpage, it looks at the code of the webpage
to see how it should be displayed ie font, font size, font color, background
color, etc. Web designers include scripts in the webpage code to check
whether or not you are using windows, what browser you are using, etc so
that the page displays properly on your computer. Scripts can also be
written to check the IP address of the computer, which is what was on this
site you viewed.

First of all, to put your mind at rest, the IP address that was displayed on
the webpage was not sent to the server and recorded etc, before the webpage
is displayed when you first visited the page, Internet Explorer ran the IP
script within the webpage code and displayed whatever the result was on the
webpage. Save the webpage to your desktop and disconnect from your network
and try it again.

The IP address of 192.168.0.63 is within an IP range that many home networks
use, there are probably 1000s more computers in this country alone with that
same IP address.

Your machine that you are using as a gateway will have 2 IP address:
1) for your WAN connection (internet connection)
2) for your LAN connection (which was created when you set up ICS)

When you visit a website using your laptop, your laptop infact asks your
gateway machine to get it for you, so your gateway machine uses the WAN to
request and receive webpage and uses the LAN to send the webpage to your
laptop. Your gateway machine is performing the same function as NAT on a
router.

Hope this has been helpful
Vijay

"Christo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> have a p2p wireless network
>
> internal IP is exosed apparantly, it was shown on a website offering a
> product to solve the problem
>
> since i dont particularly wanna spend money on anything (lol) i thought
> maybe someone here could give advice.
>
> i am using my PC as a ICS gateway and logging on with my laptop in the
> living room
>
> the laptop IP this time around is
>
> 192.168.0.63
>
> it is aquired automatically when i log onto the wireless network
>
> so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
> router with NAT?
>
> at the min my pc logs onto the net via a usb adsl modem
>
> i have been considering a router for ages now but never have the odd 30
quid
> spare (im a student and have 0 pounds)
>
> so if there is a solution within windows that can be executed to hide my
> internal IP addresses then can someone please point me to a web page
article
> or provide me with the relvant information?
>
> I would much appreciate some help
>
> Thanks (in advance)
>
> chris
>
>

On 02/02/2005 Christo wrote:

> have a p2p wireless network
>
> internal IP is exosed apparantly, it was shown on a website offering
> a product to solve the problem
>
> since i dont particularly wanna spend money on anything (lol) i
> thought maybe someone here could give advice.


As others have said this is nothing to worry about, in fact it looks
like a scam. If you want some re-assurance (or otherwise) go to:

https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

and run the shields up test.


--
Jeff Gaines
Posted with XanaNews 1.17.1.2

To add my 2p worth:

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 16:27:59 +0000, Christo wrote:

> the laptop IP this time around is
>
> 192.168.0.63

That is an RFC1918 private address. By definition, it cannot route on the
Internet.

> so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
> router with NAT?

If it's getting to the Internet, you must have access to a router with NAT
already. Or it wouldn't work. Most NAT routers enable machines with
private addresses to get out, by translating the private address to a real
one outwards and back again on the way back. There is no way to make
192.168.x.x contactable on the Internet. It is, deliberately, defined to
not work.

And you cannot hide it, as it is already hidden.

Regards, Ian

In MsgID<(E-Mail Removed)> within uk.comp.home-networking,
'Ben Cottrell' wrote:

>> so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
>> router with NAT?
>
>First of all, the address is already "hidden" as far as being able to
>see it from the outside world (The ICS gateway sees to that), although
>even if it someone did find your local IP address, they wouldn't be able
>to do anything with it.

In connection with a toy being written by myself and a friend I had cause
to think about this recently. I wouldn't be quite so sure that 'they
wouldn't be able to do anything with it' as many internet routers seem to
break the RFC's "should" statement and route things with a private IP as
the source address. Definitely ICMP packets, and probably other forms of
IP.

In the context of our app this means that looking at source IP and
verifying that it's a 1918 IP is insufficient to ensure security. I used
to think that packets couldn't be routed with such a source, but I've
demonstrated otherwise using traceroute. Hence my interest.

--
Dave Johnson - (E-Mail Removed)

In MsgID<(E-Mail Removed)>
within uk.comp.home-networking, 'Ian Northeast' wrote:

>> so, is there anyway i can hide this address or will i need to purchase a
>> router with NAT?
>
>If it's getting to the Internet, you must have access to a router with NAT
>already. Or it wouldn't work. Most NAT routers enable machines with
>private addresses to get out, by translating the private address to a real
>one outwards and back again on the way back. There is no way to make
>192.168.x.x contactable on the Internet. It is, deliberately, defined to
>not work.

You might be halfway right if the packets were UDP and therefore
connectionless, however if it's a TCP linkup then the NAT/PAT already
knows which connection is which and can route the returned data to the
correct machine. To include the private IP and use that as the per-machine
flag is ridiculously lax IMHO.

--
Dave Johnson - (E-Mail Removed)

"Dave J" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> In MsgID<(E-Mail Removed)> within uk.comp.home-networking,
> 'Ben Cottrell' wrote:
[snip]
> >First of all, the address is already "hidden" as far as being able to
> >see it from the outside world (The ICS gateway sees to that), although
> >even if it someone did find your local IP address, they wouldn't be able
> >to do anything with it.
>
> In connection with a toy being written by myself and a friend I had cause
> to think about this recently. I wouldn't be quite so sure that 'they
> wouldn't be able to do anything with it' as many internet routers seem to
> break the RFC's "should" statement and route things with a private IP as
> the source address. Definitely ICMP packets, and probably other forms of
> IP.

Under what circumstances have you seen packets escape with RFC1918 source
addresses?

Many routers (on the Internet) are configured to drop packets with RFC1918
source addresses on the grounds that they are pointless since a reply cannot
be routed. I can't recall seeing a recommendation to do this in any RFC, and
it is extra effort since IP routing is based solely on the destination
address.

Alex

"Dave J" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> You might be halfway right if the packets were UDP and therefore
> connectionless, however if it's a TCP linkup then the NAT/PAT already
> knows which connection is which and can route the returned data to the
> correct machine.

TCP and UDP can be handled similarly in a NAT router. In both cases a
timeout is required to avoid clogging the NAT table up, and an entry is
added upon seeing a "new" packet. In the case of TCP, the router can follow
the TCP connection state allowing it to remove entries sooner, but for UDP
the only way it happens is via the aforementioned timeout. Typically,
smaller timeouts are used for UDP (a few minutes) than TCP (many minutes).

Alex