I have a web server running inside my home network. I want my computers running on this home network to be able to use the external web address instead of having to use the internal IP address assigned by my router. For example, if I type what an external person would to get to my web server, on my PCs inside it doesn’t work. If I type the internal IP address assigned by the router, it works. Ideally, I just want to type the web address and have all PCs go to the web server, whether the PCs are internal to the network or external. I have my router setup to port forward all traffic on port 80 (web server traffic) and port 21 (FTP traffic) to the PC running the web server.
How Do I Get My Home Network, Which Has A Running Web Server, To Work With External Web Addresses?
Written by Make Money Online on February 10th, 2010 in Web Traffic
I use dyndns.com. It’s free for what you need it to do for you.
1.
sign up for a free account.
2.
sign up for a free host name using one of their 88 domains. For example you could use their domain name of dnsalias.com and choose “mywebserver” as your host name. Of course you can call it anything you want as long as the name isn’t already taken.
3.
download the file DYNDNS UPDATER by Kana Solution and install it on your pc as a service. You’ll have to configure it with your DYNDNS.COM account info. It’ll check your ISP assigned address and update your account at dyndns.com. This will keep your selected DNS alias name of “mywebserver.dnsalias.com” current. The updater file runs all the time and checks daily to see if your ISP changed your IP address. If the file see a difference it will automatically update dyndns.com with the new IP.
Some ISP’s don’t allow inbound traffic on port 80 or some other ports because they don’t want you hosting a server on a residential account. They would rather charge you the much higher price for a business account. You can get around this by using port 8080 or something similar. Anyone on the internet would need to put in their browser –
mywebserver.dnsalias.com:8080
and you would also have to be forwarding 8080 to your web server.
DISCLAIMER:
Following these steps may violate your terms of service with your ISP. Check your agreement before hosting any service.
If you only have one external IP address from your ISP, and it’s dynamically assigned, you can’t do that, because it’s being shared among all the PCs connecting to the internet. To accomplish your goal, you’d need to subscribe to a service that allows a dynamic IP address to be used for DNS resolution. There are a few different services available for this, but you’d need to see which one(s) your router supports, as having a service supported by your router will greatly simplify matters.