I've had a small web server for some years routed through DynDNS.org. Worked fine. I moved, no more DSL but HughesNet does get me to the world. I went to plug in my server (which had been off since 30 December) and found out that something went blooey and, well, no more server. OK, make the laptop a temporary server -- hook up the SATA drive externally, copy httpd.conf, etc., etc. change addresses and server name, start 'er up, get there directly (with http://server.domain on a fixed-IP internal LAN) but no joy getting in from outside; no ping, no connection, no nuthin'. Oops, forgot to open port 80 on the router. OK, did that. Still no joy in Mudville (well, Snowville, up to my knees). ping does see the address at DynDNS.org but no further.

Now I'm wondering. Does HughesNet block port 80 (and, probably port 22 as well)? Can I do a port-forwarding trick (and, gosh, it would be nice to have some pointer to a how-to)? Or is the problem just that 45,000 mile round trip up and back from the satellite and ground servers?

Any advice is more than appreciated.

[edit]
Well, I just learned something. The little light bulb popped on over my head and it occurred to me that the router only knows the IP address of the HughesNet modem (192.168.0.1). Well, duh.

So, I'm looking at the router setup and, whadda ya know, it supports DDNS (in fact, one of the choices is DynDNS.org -- hoo boy). OK, set that up, it works and I can get to my web page via the outside world.

Now, I'm wondering if there's a better way -- say, figure out how to query the modem for the actual IP address or just pucker up and pop for a fixed IP address from HughesNet.

Tiz a puzzlement.
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Dyndns' software update utility should be able to find your public IP address too. If you find that the dns update on your router doesn't work reliably (mine didn't) give that a try.

That's worth looking into, methinks. Thanks for the hint.