Home Server Dynamic IP Apache WebDAV query
 

Forgive me, I have trawled the web and forum about this but I don't know what I need to research.

I would like to access my apache server from the www as a small server where friends can download from. I have heard this is possible even with a dynamic IP which is what my ISP assigns me. I have about 4 very good routers so I'm sure one of them will support what I need, but what do I need to research? Is it possible? All the tutorials seem to be about 'setup a home server' but none of them take the tutorial past the gateway address! My home network is pretty sweet now, but that's not quite enough!

Hope this is possible, and thanks in advance.

Use a router that is DynDNS compatable (it will be an option in the menu - sometimes under "WAN").
Go to http://dyndns.org - and get a subdomain, and a password (or pay to register your own...) - and then configure your router to use it. You're all set.

Wow, that was a swift concise reply! My router (USR 9105) does support a number of dynamic dns providers and I went ahead and added my new DynDNS.com settings to my router as the how-to at DynDNS said. Unfortunately for me all the domain does now is show the world my router interface, which to say the least is scarey! Very unsafe!

My gateway is 192.168.1.1 my hosting machine is 192.168.1.2. I think dyndns is doing the right thing by forwarding the dns to my detected IP but it's not to the right machine? Do I have to setup a static route, virtual Servers, DMZ host?? The list goes on.. Is it a Secondary DNS Zone that I add in DyneDNS? What should I do next? All advice most welcome!

The address for the wan input on the router is exactly what your servers name should resolve to. The address you gave are unroutable private addresses. In the router setup you will need to forward port 80 to your server.

Since you said that you have several routers, hook up two of them. The outside router will be your DMZ while the inside one will be for your lan.
This link explains what to do: http://www.grc.com/nat/nat.htm

I may have misunderstood what IP address you were seeing. You need to test the DynDNS outside your network.

IP Confusion & Routing Issue
 

Thanks for your reply.

I forgot to mention my full setup.

My IP on my WAN is what dyndns.com account is set to 'see', so if it was 82.2.199.1 then I set this IP in my dyndns.com account.

192.168.1.5 is the computer with the apache and WebDAV server on it. So I need to forward port 80 of the router to 192.168.1.5. That sounds great, but now I have router problems. Rather than talking specifics routers (after all how many others have 'my router') are we referring to NAT Port Triggering?

I found a detailed guide for my router here.

For example if these were my settings:

Default Gateway: 82.2.199.1
WAN IP 82.2.217.247

How do I set this up? Anytime I type in my new dynamic IP in a browser, all I get is the router config and not my served page!

Maybe if some kind soul would tell me which section I should refer to, I will pester you no more! Thank you.

You enter your dynamic ip in the browser if you are on another network. Otherwise enter the real IP of your server. You may want to enter the server in the hosts file of your other computers.

It looks like port forwarding is called "Virtual Servers" in your modem. Also consider adding another NAT router ( Between the DMZ and the LAN ) to help isolate your web server from your LAN.

Be sure that you disable UPnP (Universal Plug n Play) on the modem. It is very dangerous (Another Microsoft innovation).

Thank you all for your support. I am still unable to point my dyndns.org url to my server but found this guide, translated from spanish for my exact setup. It however fails to say exactly what I need to do. If anyone has any ideas.. great!

Thanks again.

What I do is in my routers setup, there is a section for "Port Forwarding". I assign port 80 to the internal LAN IP of my webserver, and it works. (I also use DynDns. DynDns just points to your Internet IP. You have to tell your router where in your internal LAN the webserver is.).

Here is my webpage for my Slackware setup.
It's setup just as I stated: DynDns points to my Internet IP, then my router points/forwards to my internal LAN IP

Remedied the problem
 

hey guys, thanks for all your support and assistance. I finally figured out what was up.

My router WAS successfully forwarding the dyndns for me and anyone in the world could see my small home-baked website. The reason I couldn't see it was because I had no NAT to interpret the differene between a global address (http://mysite.com) and a serve inside my LAN. All I did was realise my router had no NAT translation, then just typed loalhost into my browser, or the IP of the server in my LAN into a browser, say http://192.168.1.2/ and viola it worked!

Thanks again for all your help. I am now happily hosting my first apache based website!