Open ports can be tested off the field

[jwakeman]

I learned something at our regional competition this weekend that I thought was worth sharing. The firewall settings (i.e. open/closed ports) are configured on the D-Link itself and are not part of the field management system. This means once you get your D-Link configured at the competition you can test that your camera images or custom data you are sending on a network port are working before getting on the field. Since you cannot connect to your D-Link wirelessly off the field after it is configured for the competition you just need to connect to the D-Link with an ethernet cable.

I know this is true because our custom data was not working (I had chosen the wrong port, 1135) but once I chose the correct port (1180) it started working. This occurred while wired into the D-Link off the field.