Opening Port 80 HELP

[topdawgg19]

Heres the situation... I am currently running windows XP and using Norton Personal Firewall. Now a friend of mine needs to be able to access my computer via port 80.

I know his IP address and even though I use it in Norton, it still will not allow him to access me. If I turn off Norton it will.

Now, how can I test if port 80 is open? Like if I use one of my other computers and try to access port 80? I know that using telnet you can "open IP port" but that only times out... is there a command in Telnet to connect to port 80 even though a web server is not running?

Windows XP
P4
Partial T1 connection with static IP's
Behind Norton Personal Firewall 2004

-Thanks for any help. I have tried every post I can find so now to you guys

 

[lgarner]

If a service isn't running on a port, the port won't respond. If you have a web server running you can "telnet <address> 80" to make a basic TCP connection to it.

 

[topdawgg19]

There is no other way to test if it is currently open?

 

[lgarner]

What way would you like? You can run "netstat" on the computer to see if it is open locally. To determine if it's open remotely, you need to make a TCP connection to it. Web Browser, Telnet, something.

"is there a command in Telnet to connect to port 80 even though a web server is not running?"

If nothing's listening on port 80, then the port isn't open. No telnet command will make a remote computer respond on a port that it's not using.

 

[topdawgg19]

Maybe I am not being clear...

I dont want the port to be open completly, anotherwords I dont want anyone to be able to use it. Only the IP i specify. Therefore, "netstat" would not show this port as listening because Norton is disabling it.

I have configured Norton to allow complete access to a specified IP address, but I dont believe port 80 is working that way because he can not get into the server until I turn off Norton.

I want to try and set this up with Norton and test it before puttting the settings on the Server. But since I am not currently running a server, and I do not want to completly open the port...(therefore "netstat" will not show it as listening.) there is nothing I can do?

-Thanks for the replies guys

 

[MichealC4]

Half open ports can cause more trouble than they are worth, I would just stick with a) using the software to limit access (I'm guessing a web server of some sort?) or b) in addition, using Norton and/or Windows Firewall to limit access to the listening port.

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"Security is like an onion" - Unknown