The Network preferences pane allows you to change iGet Mobile's networking-related options, and control whether it notifies you by email when network information changes.
The Network preference pane.
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Allow iGet Mobile to connect to the Internet for network diagnostics - When enabled, iGet will periodically connect to one of the servers at nakahara-informatics.com, in order to attempt to diagnose whether the Internet connectivity is functioning properly to make your iGet Mobile server accessible from the Internet. This check also enables it to determine when the IP address you need to use to access your server has changed.
If you disable this feature, iGet Mobile won't know whether it is accessible via the network (and so won't be able to notify you if the access details change). Therefore, we recommend that you leave this on. However, in some security-conscious environments (such as an office where you work, but don't control the network policy), it may be desirable to turn this off. In that case, you will have to figure out your sever's effective IP address yourself. -
Send email notifications whenever this Mac's URL changes - This feature was implemented in response to user requests, and is a kind of "poor man's dynamic DNS". (Although perhaps a better name would be "lazy man's dynamic DNS", since basic dynamic DNS service is generally free.) If you have enabled the network diagnostics feature above, and configured your email preferences, then iGet Mobile will send you an email every time it detects that the IP address has changed.
Most typical ISPs, at least in the US and Japan, periodically assign you a new IP address, unless you pay an additional fee for a static IP address. With this feature, you'll always know your Mac's current IP address, without having to set up dynamic DNS. (We still recommend dynamic DNS, however. It's a better solution.) -
Attempt to automatically configure router for port forwarding - If your router supports it, and the firmware isn't so buggy that it doesn't work, iGet Mobile can configure port forwarding for you. In the screen shot above, the box is checked and the status message indicates it worked. If your router is not compatible with this feature, you will instead see an error message below the checkbox.
This feature is nice and convenient. However, it doesn't guarantee success. If somebody else on your network is also using iGet Mobile (or any other server program which uses the same port), and they start their server first, they will "win" and the automatic configuration will fail. Therefore, we recommend that you disable this and configure your router manually, once you're sure you want to use iGet Mobile on a long-term basis. -
Hostname - This is just a hint to iGet Mobile, to let it do better checking and notification. If you use dynamic DNS, you will have chosen a hostname for your mac, such as "mycoolmac.no-ip.com" or similar. However, when iGet Mobile does its diagnostic checking, it will detect the effective IP address and canonical hostname of the Mac. Normally, it is not possible to detect a dynamic DNS hostname, since that is just something you arbitrarily chose.
Similarly, even if you have a static IP address (cool!), it is uncommon to have reverse-DNS configured. This means that the hostname you prefer to use isn't detectable from the IP address.
Entering the hostname here, whether it is based on dynamic DNS, or a hostname within a domain you control that you have assigned to your Mac's static IP address. This lets iGet Mobile know it's the hostname you prefer, and so it will be the first hostname used when doing diagnostic checks - Help button - The help button launches Help Viewer and opens this help topic.
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