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AM-10HD / Aug 2008
A M - 1 0 H D G U I
The Really Remote Connection!
One of our customers routinely adjusts his station’s Wheastone processor from
the comfort of his company car. In order to accomplish this he connects it to his
station’s business LAN router, maps the unit’s IP address over to a “public” IP ad‑
dress via NAT (Network Address Translation), and creates a hole in the firewall for
this IP address. This gives the Wheatstone “Internet” connectivity, albeit to a very
select few.
Then from the laptop in his car he connects to the Internet using his Verizon
wireless card, fires up the GUI, connects to the IP address that is running in the box
(NAT takes care of the IP address differences), and
voila! He can adjust his Wheat
‑
stone processors from anywhere.
We will leave the myriad other ways in which the AM‑10HD can be remotely
controlled “wirelessly” up to your imagination and the rapid changes in wireless
technology!
VPN
Another way to connect remotely to the AM‑10HD is via VPN. A VPN, or Vir
‑
tual Private Network, is a private data tunnel between computer devices. It behaves
just as if the local and remote computers were sitting beside each other – devices
connected via VPN act like they are on one big LAN regardless of where they are
physically located. VPN tunnels can be configured both with and without data en
‑
cryption. Setting up a VPN is not difficult, but certainly beyond the scope of this
manual. Although we have not specifically tested the AM‑10HD with VPN connec
‑
tions there is no technical reason why it would not work.
The AM-10HD and Internet Security Concerns
The AM‑10HD does not act as a “web device” or “web server,” nor does it sup‑
port open ports to the Internet. It operates on a custom operating system that has no
available “hooks” to the outside world. Therefore there is no worry that someone
could “hack” into the AM‑10HD and use it as a pathway to the rest of the network
to which it is connected.
About DHCP and the AM-10HD
The AM‑10HD does not utilize DHCP – Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (or
automatically assigned network addressing) – and needs to be assigned a “STATIC”
network‑unique IP address.
Many DHCP servers assign addresses starting at the bottom of the group
192.168.x.xxx. Therefore choosing an address high in that group, say 192.168.0.200,
as a static IP address will likely keep it out of the way of the busiest DHCP addressing.
However, it’s always wise to check with your local friendly network administrator
to determine what static IP address is open and safe to use.
Sometimes the local network warrants the “Subnet” and “Gateway” values to be
vastly different, but our suggested starting values of 255.255.255.0 for the Subnet
and 255.255.255.255 for the Gateway should suffice for all but the most complex
situations.
