A little bugfix release: 1.2.1
25 07 2007It’s always good if you don’t have too push out bugfix releases all too often, but once in a while it becomes necessary.
This time, we’re fixing two very rare hangs that could happen when stopping a profile or when heavy traffic is flowing over the router. Additionally, we’ve further reduced Lighthouse’s CPU and memory footprint while increasing its overall snappiness.
On the UPnP front, we no longer require routers to support the retrieval of the external IP address in order for Lighthouse to associate. If the router doesn’t support this, but port forwardings work fine, Lighthouse will happily associate with such routers now and simply report the external IP address as “Unknown”. This should increase Lighthouse’s overall UPnP compatibility and make it work on some previously unsupported models.
Also, we’ve found a weird bug in some recent Netgear firmware that prevented Lighthouse from associating with the affected models. However, we were able to come up with a workaround that solves the problem until Netgear releases a fix. If you have a Netgear router with the latest firmware, but couldn’t get Lighthouse to run, we suggest that you retry with 1.2.1.
Another thing: We realize that some of you might want to get another trial period after the initial one, especially if you are buying a new router etc… It sucks if you want to test Lighthouse again, but find out that you can’t because your trial period has expired.
That’s why we’ve implemented limited registration keys that are only valid for a certain amount of time. In case you want another trial period, just drop us an email at support@codelaide.com and we’ll happily send you a license that’s good for another 2 weeks of free trial.
Lighthouse 1.2.1 can be downloaded here: Lighthouse 1.2.1 product page
By the way: Be sure to check out the Get more profiles page, as we’re periodically adding some new port mapping profiles to it. Just recently, we’ve added a profile for the freeware program Telekinesis that enables you to access your home Mac via your iPhone: Cool!
On the UPnP front, we no longer require routers to support the retrieval of the external IP address in order for Lighthouse to associate. If the router doesn’t support this, but port forwardings work fine, Lighthouse will happily associate with such routers now and simply report the external IP address as “Unknown”.
Might it be possible to use a page or service such as whatismyip.com to figure out the external IP in another manner? Not really affecting me, but just an idea…
It’s a possibility I’ve also been thinking about, but there’s one huge problem: The IP address with which you reach the internet isn’t necessarily the external IP address of the router: This only holds true if there’s only one NAT router between you and the internet, but I know that Lighthouse is also used in setups where there are multiple layers of networks chained together through NAT routers, where only the top-most level is connected to the internet.
In this case, the whatismyip.com approach would display the top-most router’s external IP address rather than that of the router with which Lighthouse is associated, which is not what should happen. Therefore, I’ve decided to rather display “Unknown” when the clean (i.e. UPnP-based) approach is not supported.
Ah, that makes sense. Although I wouldn’t personally have a need for the external IP on an internal router like that, I’m sure someone does!