Specifications

Sicon-8 Technical Manual CircuitWerkes, Inc.

Using the Sicon-8’s Web server:

Your Sicon-8 contains an onboard Web server.

This Web server has proved to be very stable &

supports multiple, simultaneous users and many

different browsers. Although the interface looks

simple, the real power of the Web server lies

“under the hood”, in its speed. Readings are

continually updated every two seconds, which is

much faster than many competing products.

In order to use the Web server, your network can

provide DHCP for the Web server to obtain an IP

address, or you can use the Sicontroller software to

set a static IP address as shown below.

An IP address inside a network will usually look like XXX.XXX.X.XXX, for example 192.168.1.100. Most networks use a

router as their central hardware. When a device is plugged into a router, the device normally obtains an IP address from

the router using an automatic process called DHCP. If your network doesn’t provide DHCP and you have not set a static

IP address using the software, the Web server will assume an address of 192.168.1.250. If you’re using DHCP to set the

Web server’s IP address, you can reboot the Sicon-8’s Web server and then click the “Display Current IP” button to find

out what the address is for your Web server. The message box will display the current IP address. Note that you must

reboot the Sicon-8’s Web server to switch from manual IP setting to DHCP and vice-versa.

The Web server always uses port 80. Often, sites have multiple devices that want to use port 80, including some routers.

In most cases, your router can simply redirect a different outside (WAN) port to the individual Web servers’ inside IP

addresses. For instance, the Sicon-8 and an audio IP device each have Web servers using port 80. The Sicon-8 has an

internal IP address of 192.168.1.250 and the audio device has an IP of 192.168.1.200. If you are on the inside (LAN) of

the network everything looks great. You can browse to either device and everything works. To access the site from the

outside, you must open a “pinhole” that allow data to pass from browsers to your Sicon-8. You can encounter a problem

if you try to route WAN port 80 to LAN port 80 for both Web servers. Only one will be assigned. You will not gain access

to the second one. Instead, redirect LAN port 80 for each device to a different outside port, such as 800 and 801. In

practice, you would access your site by entering its IP address followed by a colon and the port number

(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:800), or by its URL name followed by the port (www.mysite.com:800).

NOTE: It has been reported that Linksys routers have a serious defect in pinholes that will prevent you from outside

accessing any/all Web servers that require port 80. Linksys uses port 80 for their router’s own Web server that is used for

configuration and they do not provide any option for redirecting port numbers from the LAN side of the router to the WAN

side of the router. The result is that you cannot use port 80 to access any LAN side Web server, nor can you change the

port number to access that device. We have been advised that the UPnP setup of the Linksys routers will allow you to

configure a route with port redirect. We have not confirmed this with all Linksys routers, however this function does work

like standard pinholes to allow you to port a Webserver inside of your network. to the outside. If you have a Linksys router

with UPnP capability, this is the only known way to host a Webserver that will be accessed from the outside.