PilotEdge Forums

I am new to shared cockpit, but if anybody wants to try the jar320 with me, I would be thrilled.
Jack

I'm sorry I did not see this post earlier.. I have been wanting to try shared cockpit for a while. Let me know if you do it again.. I'd like to give it a go.
Adam

yes, how about this Saturday, I am available all day

Jack.. we gave it a good effort. Maybe someone here on the boards can get us over the hump with regard to SmartCopilot.(SC)
* Status..
We have downloaded and successfully installed SC. Both able to open within xp10. Both get to where you enter IP's in Set Up... so in a nut shell we have gotten far enough that we thought it should work. (but it's not) Must be that one small detail we are missing. If anyone has some experience with cockpit sharing and SP in particular would you be willing to assist? Really looks like it would be fun and worth the time investment to get it up and running.

Thanks in advance..

Chances are, it's a port forwarding issue on your router. Most people aren't aware, but your computer isn't directly reachable from the internet. All of your devices (Wi-fi enabled phones, iPads, Tivos, PC's, Macs, latops and any other internet-connected devices) are on a private, internal network behind your router. The router is the ONLY device directly addressable from the internet (ie, it has a valid, reachable IP address).

The IP addresses of your internal devices are typically 192.168.x.x, which is for use on private, internal networks. For example, my PC might have an IP address of 192.168.1.100, and SO MIGHT YOURS. The reason this doesn't cause a problem (ie, packets destined for my computer ending up on your machine) is because those addresses are never exposed outside of your private network. When you make a connection to the outside world, your router uses Network Address Translation (NAT) to hide your internal IP and forward the packets to the internet using the ROUTER's IP address. When information is arrives at your router from the outside world, it is forwarded back to your PC, using your internal IP.

This works well when YOUR computer fired the first salvo in the first place, ie. initiated the connection. However, in shared cockpit mode, you need to be able to receive information from an external machine (ie, the other guy you're trying to fly with) without having sent him any information yet.

For this to happen, you need to do 2 things, both are critical:
1) you need to provide that person with the EXTERNAL IP address of your ROUTER (not 192.168.1.1, which is typically the internal address of your router). You can obtain this address by going to a site such as http://whatismyipaddress.com

2) you need to set up PORT FORWARDING on your router to send any incoming packets which arrive on a specific port (the ports used by Smart Copilot) to your PC. To do that, you'll need your computer's IP address (typically, 192.168.1.x). You can get that in Windows by opening a dos prompt and typing 'ipconfig'.

With all of this in place, assuming you don't have any firewall configured on your computer, you should be good to go.

Thanks Keith. We were so close but but needed that bit of info. ;o)

None of this is specific to smart copilot, btw. This is the same process any time you need to accept connections from the outside world on a machine behind a NAT router.

...now add in the issue of double NAT :facepalm:

Those of us on fixed wireless and 4g modems have a difficult time when it comes to port forwarding and IP passthrough.

Just an fyi for those with this issue I was able to get full pass-through using AirVPN.

Have not had time to circle back on this yet and try it out. Look forward to giving a try. I know of what you speak but.... I'm no expert. I recently set up a network at work to share FileMaker Pro Database. Had to punch through with port forwarding but that was with out wireless...

I appreciate all the help here and I will post my success or failure.