{"id":2849,"date":"2018-08-17T08:30:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T07:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.threesl.com\/blog\/?p=2849"},"modified":"2022-10-07T16:39:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T15:39:15","slug":"cradle-network-address-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threesl.com\/blog\/cradle-network-address-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Remote Workers and Cradle – Network Address Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your company is using Cradle, but you’re a remote worker – how do you connect to the Cradle Database Server (CDS)?<\/p>\n

With Network Address Translation<\/em> – the IT administrator, where the CDS is located, can modify their firewall to redirect specific external ports to a local server.<\/p>\n

Make a note of the internal IP address<\/em> of the CDS<\/em> – we’ll use CDS_IPADDR<\/strong> later in this post to reference this address. (In this test environment it is 192.168.11.168).<\/p>\n

Cradle Configuration Changes<\/h3>\n

As an example of a small Cradle<\/em> system with 6 users, we can configure the ports file as such.\u00a0 We’re setting ports for each possible user (6) and an extra – so thats 7 ports in each range. To make it easier setting the firewall rules – so we have less rules to setup, we’ve got all the ports in UDP and TCP specific consecutive blocks, which is different to how we have them in the Cradle Help – https:\/\/www.threesl.com\/cradle\/help\/<\/a><\/p>\n

CDS_UDP_PORT_NUMBER = 23960<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>TOOL_UDP_PORT_NUMBER = 23961<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>PRJMAN_UDP_PORT_NUMBER = 23962<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>CDS_TCP_TOOL_PORT_NUMBER\u00a0\u00a0 = 16161<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>CDS_TCP_PRJMAN_PORT_NUMBER = 16162<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>UTILITIES_TCP_PORT_NUMBER\u00a0\u00a0 = 16163-16169<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>WBENCH_TCP_PORT_NUMBER\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 = 16170-16176<\/tt>
\n<\/tt>PRJMAN_TCP_PORT_NUMBER\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 = 16177<\/tt><\/p>\n

This ports file needs to be copied to all the clients using this CDS.<\/p>\n

Firewall Config Changes<\/h3>\n

The IT administrator can now edit their firewall rules to redirect the external IP ports<\/em> to the internal CDS.<\/em>\u00a0 As part of these rules they can set it so that only specific remote IP addresses<\/em> are permitted to access these redirected ports.<\/p>\n

I’m using pfSense<\/em> as the example firewall in this case, and adding separate rules for each Cradle Port<\/em>.
\n\"pfSense<\/p>\n

Through the application of Network Address Translation, the remote worker now uses their locally installed Cradle client<\/em> installation and talks to the Cradle Database Server,<\/em> as if it is on the Cradle site’s external IP address – which they need to configure as their CRADLE_CDS_HOST address<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Article Updated<\/h5>\n

28\/06\/2021 – Use of port ranges in firewall rules.<\/p>\n