Entry

Linux (ServerName <router pub. IP>) receives, but ignores requests from outside firewall. Conf prob?

Jun 4th, 2001 19:08
Jc Imbeault, Mik Lamming,

Your PC has a private (non-routable) IP address. The IP addresses in the 
range 192.168.x.x are for private use and cannot be seen by people on 
the Big Internet. I have a feeling you a using a cable modem or DSL 
line. For example if you are using a DSL line with a router type modem, 
the modem itself is assigning this IP address to you, maybe through 
DHCP.
In order for your pages to be viewable people have to know what your 
"real" IP address is. If your ISP doesn't gives you a static IP 
address then use that instead of 192.168.1.4. If they don't then things 
are more difficult. You'll have to find out what the IP address of your 
firewall or router-modem is and use that (your firewall has two IP 
addresses, one like your is a private 192.168.x.x address (probably 
192.168.1.1) and cannot be seen by people on the Internet. The other is 
the external IP and *can* be seen by people on the Internet (e.g. 
203.100.67.34); that the one you want to give people so they can access 
your server).
Unfortunately that IP address of your router-modem is probably only a 
DHCP temporary address, it probably changes every few days or so. This 
means that your web server's address will also change every few days. So 
if you wanted to have a server that's always viewable you're out of 
luck. People will only be able to find you if you keep posting your new 
address everytime it changes.
To make matters even more difficult your firewall is probably performing 
NAT also. This is another topic that I don't quite want to get into, but 
let's just say you'll have to add a NAT entry in the firewall to 
redirect any requests for port 80 on the firewall's pulic IP to port 80 
on your server (192.168.1.4).
Hope this helps!