Setting up your router.

Once you have MyCourts web service running it is necessary to configure your router (previously known as a modem) to direct your internet connected members to your MyCourts website.

Your router is automatically assigned an IP address every time you switch your router on and it connects to your ISP. This IP address will often change as your ISP allocates it from a pool of available address numbers as and when needed. For you to tell your members what that address is so that they can enter it into their browsers is an impossible task if it changes frequently. To avoid this you will need to obtain the same address each time you connect to your ISP. Your ISP can arrange this by allocating the same IP address each time you connect. This is called a Static IP Address.

Before you configure your router you will need to ensure that your internet users have a web address to enter into their browser. This web address is normally in the format of www.<yourDomainNameHere>.com . You can have almost any name you like as long as it complies with Domain Name accepted conventions. We use and recommend mycourts.<YourDomainName>.com . Whoever setup and manages your Domain Name Service (DNS) will need to do this for you. Often, your web developer or designer will also be able to configure the DNS for you. If you are managing your DNS yourself you need to create a name of "mycourts" (or whatever you have chosen) and assign the static ip address you obtained from your ISP to it.

Once you have completed the above, your users will be able to connect to your router by entering http://mycourts.<YourDomainName>.com into their browsers address widow. You now need to tell the router where to send the user to on your LAN. In other words, you need to create a route so that when your router receives data from your users, where does the router need to send the data so that your user will get something meaningful back (ie the web pages).

Configuring your router is remarkably easy however each manufacturer has their own way of you entering in the required data. It has been our experience that they often confuse this by using different terminology for the same things. All you are doing is entering a route or path that the router needs to know before it sends incoming data to the machine that is running MyCourts web service. Unfortunately there are no conventions or agreed methods between manufacturers as to how this is done.

In addition to the IP address that each machine and router has, there are over 60,000 port numbers available for your router to use. This means that whilst you have one IP address, it can handle over 60,000 different channels to communicate on. Some of these port numbers are used by common applications. The most well known is port 80 which is used as the default port number for the www web service application. That simply means that you don't have to enter the port number 80 every time you enter a web address into your browser. Your bowser enters the 80 automatically if you don't enter another one. In your browser, you can enter a different port number by adding ":8181" to the end of the web address.

To configure your router to know where MyCourts Web Service is, you need to know the IP address of the machine that is running MyCourts web service. You also need to know what port number MyCourts is listening for data on. This information is available when you setup MyCourts web service using MyCourts Administrator.

To help you in setting up your router correctly we have included some screen captures of specific routers we have come across. You can view them by clicking the links below.

We are also happy to login remotely to your computer and setup your router for the initial installation. Please send an email to support@mycourts.com.au and we will try to assist further. Please note that we can only assist with basic installations. You should contact your network administrator before proceeding.