Running with a workbench behind a firewall
If your workbench is behind a firewall, and your firewall blocks your computer from being connected to by remote hosts,
then you should consider selecting enable port number for firewall-aware connection.
To enable firewall-aware connection:
- Select Window > Preferences. The Preferences window opens.
- From the tree on the left, select Agent Controller. The Agent Controller preferences pane opens.
- Use this pane to:
Enable the Workbench is running behind a firewall setting under Firewall Setting. From here, select
User specified port range beginning at:, and enter the first port of a range of ports that the workbench should listen on. This setting
requires that you open a range of ports in your firewall, allowing remote machines to connect to the Eclipse workbench on these ports.
The workbench will listen on the ports that you have specified, beginning with the above port and incrementing by one until a free port is found. As a general
practice, it is a good idea to open a port for each concurrently running agent; for example, if you plan to have 5 agents running concurrently, open 5
ports to handle those agents.
- On the other hand, if Use system defined ports is selected, the JVM and the operating system will select the ports to listen to in a
platform specific manner, and the selection of ports is likely to be ephemeral. This is the default behavior of the workbench,
and may not allow connection by remote hosts through the firewall.
Note
The workbench only listens on these ports when you are connected to the agent controller of
a local or remote host. The agent controller connects to your workbench on the ports that you select
in order to relay data from agents that are connected to it. Note that ports in the port range that are in use by other local processes are skipped.
Related concepts
Security overview