Port Question - source port not same as destination

[fray_bentos]

I have just signed up for some free webspace and it comes with CPanel to control the various functions, accessed by www. domainname.com/cpanel which actually goes to https:// ip.address:2083.

Now when i try to access this from my home network I cannot, but i can from the same machine on another network (so it's not my machines software firewall).

My laptop connects to a wireless access point and then to the internet through a 'smoothwall' firewall box. When i try to connect to this address from my laptop in IE or firefox the smoothwall rejects the returning packets from the remote machine on port 2083 as my laptop has sent the information on a different port i.e. 2793 (smoothwall told me this as did another bit of software monitoring the activity on the network card).

So my (long-winded) question is: Should the request bound for port 2083 on the server be sent from the same port on my laptop? If it had come from 2083 on my machine then the firewall would let it through as i had intiated the communication. How do i get it to be sent from the intended port?

Thanks.

[b0redom]

The short answer is, it doesn't matter what port it comes from, it's where you're going to. You probably have a rule which says block everything except for.....

HTTP
HTTPS
FTP
SSH

You probably need to allow another one which says you can talk out to 2083.

[fray_bentos]

Thank you for the quick reply, that takes part of the problem out of it for me, looks like it may never be getting past the firewall to the internet then, I will check again what traffic is allowed out of the network as i'm not bothered about blocking anything going out.

[fray_bentos]

I've now ensured that the client is allowed full access to the internet but i still cannot get to the page from my network. Short of taking the smoothwall out of the setup any suggestions?

[dawood]

The best way is to contact the free webspace support or check their FAQ to confirm the ports need to open on firewall.