Configure a robot that is behind NAT so it can talk to its hub
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Configure a robot that is behind NAT so it can talk to its hub

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Article ID: 107934

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Updated On:

Products

DX Unified Infrastructure Management (Nimsoft / UIM) CA Unified Infrastructure Management On-Premise (Nimsoft / UIM) CA Unified Infrastructure Management SaaS (Nimsoft / UIM)

Issue/Introduction

We have a robot behind NAT which is having trouble communicating.

Symptoms may include:

  • robot appears green in IM but we cannot open the configuration GUI for the controller

  • we cannot deploy any probes to the robot - we receive a communication error (2)

  • In Infrastructure Manager (IM), the robot shows up using/displaying its local (non-NAT) IP address which we know the hub can't communicate with



     

Environment

  • UIM 20.x.x
     

Cause

It is expected that a hub will be on the same network segment as the robot. In some cases, this cannot be accomplished and NAT is used.

The following three settings can be used to try and get around this issue.

local_ip_validation = yes /no
strict_ip_binding =  yes / no
robotip_alias = XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX represents the NAT IP.

In most cases, the first two keys are present in robot.cfg so you do not need to add them.  Add the robotip_alias and configure it with the NAT IP.

A different combination of these keys might need to be tested. 


 

Resolution

Example:

1) the robot has a local/internal  IP address of  192.X.XXX.XXX 
2) the NAT IP that the hub needs to communicate on is 10.0.XXX.XXX
3) the HUB IP is 10.1.XXX.XXX

in the robot.cfg of the robot you would set the following values:

hubip = 10.1.XXX.XXX
robotip = 192.X.XXX.XXX
robotip_alias = 10.0.XXX.XXX

Restart the robot.

If the following keys are set to 'yes' then you may need to set them to no, and in some cases we have seen where you have to specifically add them and set them to "no" so it couldn't hurt to add them at the same time:

local_ip_validation = no
strict_ip_binding = no

After you add the robotip_alias and restart the robot watcher service, the robot will check-in with the hub and inform the hub of the appropriate IP to communicate on.  This should resolve the issue.

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