How is that possible if the IP is dynamic and changing? I disagree with this but I have been wrong before. If you can give some resources to explain this it would be appreciated as it goes against everything I know and have been taught.

The changing IP makes no difference. Incoming connections are directed to the router itself, the router has the public IP. It's then up to the router to decide what to do with the incoming connections. The most common scenario is to use port forwarding to selectively send incoming connections to various local machines based on the port, or filter them out with the firewall.

The only effect that a dynamic IP has is that you need to remember to connect to a different IP whenever it changes, and you might need to reboot the router whenever the IP changes on the modem (most ISPs in my experience only change the IP after you cycle power, which probably will only happen after a power outage, in which case the router is being power cycled anyway).

My home setup has a single dynamic IP with port forwarding set up. Incoming connections on port 45631, 3389, and 14081 are directed to one machine (air video server, remote desktop, and torrent), incoming connections on port 21, 22, and 80 are directed to a different machine (ssh, ftp, http), and incoming connections on another port are directed to a networked webcam.

The individual machines need to have static IPs on the local network, but the changing public IP isn't a problem.

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That makes sense. I am remembering a little bit now back when I had to setup port forwarding for some gaming I did a long time ago, I don't think I have done anything with port forwarding since and have only used NAT.

I stand corrected; thanks for that explanation suicidaleggroll

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Hello,

When you connect to the server, you should give the router's ip. and then, in the router, you should create a rule that the incoming connections in port 80 should be redirected to machine X (i dunno the way for your router, in mine, it's the internal IP. with this configuration, no matter if you have a dynamic IP from your ISP.

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yep... that just might be what causes this mess... many thanks;
as it turns out my ISP (from which i got the router from) has altered the firmware to its own version (branded the thing). this version doesnt have a "Port forwarding" option or the option to chane NAT to open (rather than "strict", im clue-less as to the differences). the isp in return has a web page that allows me to forward ports but not set any ip translation. howerver even-though i forwarded port 80 to 10.0.0.3 from the web-interface, theres no change in result.

my routers log has the following entry:
Firewall: packet accept. 10.0.0.3(52358) --> 173.213.109.225(80), Protocol TCP.
the second IP being the proxy im using.
any idea what is this strange 52358 port?

anyway, i hope tomorrow i could go and change my router to something that hasnt been branded.

disabling NAT makes all devices on the network not being able to access the internet

isnt that what i already did with forwarding port 80 to 10.0.0.3 (my computer)?