Dev Server Access

[aplusdesigners]

Hello. So I have an Asus RT-N66U router. I am wanting to setup a Windows Web Development server to host my pages while I am in college, so I don't have to pay for hosting. I have the server software, thanks to my college and I have the server setup, now I just need to know how to put it into the network and access it. Thanks for any help. I am kinda new to the networking thing so I am sure I will have questions.

TIA, Lee

 

[androbourne]

Well this is assuming quite a few things.

But make sure the server is connected via ethernet, assign the NIC a static IP and port forward required ports from the outside to the static ip of your server.

Every router is different so it would be difficult for me to explain to you how to port forward something in there. Might be best to google videos on it.

You most likely need ports 80 and 443 forwarded. But check software documentation or menu. it should tell you exactly what to forward.

I'm also assuming you have a static IP from your ISP? How do you play on accessing the websites if your IP changes and you do not have a static IP? (you can look into Dyndns services, such as no-ip.com if that is the case)

 

[aplusdesigners]

I am not really looking to serve it out to the world, I am not that advanced yet, but to mainly have it on my LAN with LAN access only. Once I get a little more advanced, I will get one of the Dynamic DNS services and have a sub-domain of my domain name forward to that DDNS service. I know how to do all of that, so no problem with that. I just want to be able to type something like cthat in my browser and have it go to my dev server. I will look at Youtube for some vids.
Thanks,
Lee

Well this is assuming quite a few things.

But make sure the server is connected via ethernet, assign the NIC a static IP and port forward required ports from the outside to the static ip of your server.

Every router is different so it would be difficult for me to explain to you how to port forward something in there. Might be best to google videos on it.

You most likely need ports 80 and 443 forwarded. But check software documentation or menu. it should tell you exactly what to forward.

I'm also assuming you have a static IP from your ISP? How do you play on accessing the websites if your IP changes and you do not have a static IP? (you can look into Dyndns services, such as no-ip.com if that is the case)

 

[androbourne]

There is a few things you can do for that. But in either manner. You will need to at least allow those ports through the local windows firewall for LAN to LAN. You shouldn't have to make any changes to the router. Nothing on internal LAN is blocked by a firewall. Normally just WAN to LAN communications or if you subnet it off, that subnet to subnet entry will need to be allowed. Anything on a single subnet should be good to communicate with each other without further router adjustments.

To get what you want. You can either name the server whatever name you want to resolve in the browser. "i.e cthat" and it will resolve the address based on DNS name. AKA server name.

Another option is to create either a custom A host DNS entry to have "cthat" to resolve to a static IP of the server, or you can adjust the host file on the local machine to do the same job.