In order to give your server and its services access to the internet, you need to make sure your router opens up access or “ports” to the internet so you can access those services over the internet. Opening this access is called “Port Forwarding” because it tells your router to forward certain traffic that comes in on a certain port to the proper service on your server. So your router serves as the gate keeper for all traffic in and out of your server as your router serves as a physical firewall keeping out traffic you don’t want to access your server. Thus, your router with port forwarding enabled allows you to access your server remotely over the internet while keeping others trying to access our server out unless they have been given access by you.

If your router happens to be an Airport Extreme Base Station, you can have Server App manage your router for you, making sure all the necessary ports are open and allow access to the services you have configured. If you don’t have an Airport Extreme or would like to do your own port forwarding, you can do this in the software that came with your router. It will usually be referred to as NAT (Network Address Translation) and will have a section for you to add ports that you want to open up. For Lion Server, you can see a list of ports it uses for certain services HERE. Below is a tutorial I put together that explains port forwarding and how to do it both in the Airport Utility that comes with the Airport Extreme Base Station and through the Server App in Lion Server.

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Tags: Tutorials, Mac OSX, Server, Apple, Screencast