Port Forwarding

Port forwarding may be required to enable communication from the SBV software to your time clocks. Port forwarding is not required in the following scenarios:

• The software is in the same physical location as your time clocks
• The network that the software resides in is connected to the network that the clocks are in through a VPN or a WAN

Scenarios where port forwarding will be required are:

• SBV is hosting the software one of our cloud servers
• The software is located on your server at a different physical location from the time clock and there is no direct network connection between these locations

What is required

• Each time clock requires a dedicated internal IP address
• Each time clock will need to be programmed with the gateway address
• Each time clock needs to be programmed with the host bits
• Each time clock will require it's own port forwarding rule

Port forwarding allows the software to use the public IP address of the location where the time clock is so that the software can communicate to each time clock.

Here is a typical port forwarding scenario when you have one time clock at each location. In this example the time clock has been assigned the IP address 192.168.15.50

• Port forwarding to 192.168.15.50 on port 3001 using port 3001 internally

Here is a typical port forwarding scenario when you have more than one time clock at each location. In this example the time clocks has been assigned the IP addresses 192.168.15.50, 192.168.15.51 and 192.168.15.52

• Port forwarding to 192.168.15.50 on port 3001 using port 3001 internally
• Port forwarding to 192.168.15.51 on port 3002 using port 3001 internally
• Port forwarding to 192.168.15.52 on port 3003 using port 3001 internally

Please note that all internal traffic needs to be on port 3001 as this is the port that the HandPunch time clocks use for all communication.

Testing port forwarding

Once port forwarding is set up, you can test this by using telnet at the Windows command prompt. This should be done from a different location from where the time clock is. In this example, we are testing the connection using the public IP address of 26.59.154.87 to the time clock with the IP address of 192.168.15.52. The port forwarding rule is using port 3003.

After entering telnet <public IP address> <port> press Enter and you should get a blank telnet screen. If you get a response that indicates that a connection could not be made then the port forwarding is not working, assuming that the time clock has been programmed with all the correct network information and is connected to your network.

If the telnet test is unsuccessful then the software will not be able to communicate to the time clock. There is no need to contact SBV before confirming that the port forwarding is working. If the telnet test is unsuccessful then we can guarantee you that the software will not be able to communicate to the time clocks.