Remote Browsing and Firewalls

For General Users

If your network has a firewall between desktop computers and the computer that is hosting SAS, Web browsers cannot display Web pages from your SAS session. Usually, this problem is indicated by a time-out or connection error from the Web browser. If you receive a time-out or connection error, contact your system administrator.

For System Administrators

To enable the display of Web pages when a firewall exists between desktop computers and the computer that is hosting SAS, a firewall rule must be added that allows a Web browser to connect to SAS. The firewall rule specifies a range of network ports for which SAS remote browsing connections are allowed. Contact the appropriate system administrator who can select and configure a range of network ports for remote browsing. The range depends on the number of simultaneous SAS users. A value of approximately three times the number of simultaneous SAS users should reserve a sufficient number of network ports.
After the firewall rule is added, SAS must be configured to listen for network connections in the network port range. Normally, SAS selects any free network port, but the HTTPSERVERPORTMIN and the HTTPSERVERPORTMAX system options limit the network ports that SAS can select. Add these system options to your SAS configuration file. Set HTTPSERVERPORTMIN to the lowest port in the network range. Set HTTPSERVERPORTMAX to the highest port in the network range. For example, if the system administrator defined a network port range of 8000 to 8200, the system options would be the following:
httpserverportmin=8000
httpserverportmax=8200
After these system options are set, desktop computers can display Web pages. If there is an insufficient number of network ports, or the system options are specified incorrectly, a message appears in the SAS log.
For more information about these system options, see the HTTPSERVERPORTMIN= System Option in SAS System Options: Reference and HTTPSERVERPORTMAX= System Option in SAS System Options: Reference.