BusinessObjects Enterprise Administrator's Guide

Firewall configuration overview

By default BusinessObjects Enterprise uses dynamically chosen port numbers for communications between components. You must change this default when you place a stateful firewall that uses packet filtering or Network Address Translation (NAT) between BusinessObjects Enterprise components because these firewalls provide protection by permitting communications from outside the firewall with only specified addresses and ports inside the firewall.

To enable BusinessObjects Enterprise to communicate across such a firewall, you must:

1. Configure its components to use fixed addresses and ports.
2. Configure your firewall to allow communications to the services behind the firewall using these addresses and ports.

The process is similar when you configure your BusinessObjects Enterprise system to communicate across SOCKS proxy filters. But BusinessObjects Enterprise provides direct support for SOCKS proxy filters, so you need only configure each component to be aware of the location and type of the proxies that they communicate with.

Note:    When this section mentions firewalling different BusinessObjects Enterprise components, it assumes that the components reside on separate computers. If the components reside on the same computer, their communication is uninterrupted by firewalls, and no additional configuration is required.