How to set up a website using a static IP address, linksys router, and windows server 2000?

Question

I can connect to a data polling computer through the router using Windows XP's remote desktop connection. I can connect to the router remotely. I can poll the datalogger remotely. I can create .asp files locally. I can connect locally to the server using Frontpage 2003. I have setup the router to direct port 80 to the server. I've been trying to do all that is suggested in various net searches. If someone can recommend a book, I will appreciate it. The linksys router has four ports. One port is used by the polling computer ruunning Windows XP Pro. The second is used by the datalogger. The third port is used by a Dell server.

Answer 1

you will need to login to the linksys and setup the web server as
a host in the DMZ and allow inbound port 80 traffic to it.

ANY TIME you allow inbound access to a system, you take the risk it CAN be compromised.

If you want ppl to find it by name, and not just by IP addr, you will need to setup dynamic DNS.

Answer 2

I'm not completely clear on your question, but I'll take a guess here.

Your router has a WAN port. This connects to the internet. The other ports on the router are LAN ports. This means that the Router has the public IP of the server.

First question: do you have a static Internet IP (one that never changes?) If not, people will have a hard time finding your server, because that process is typically done with DNS servers, that map a domain name to one or more servers in your domain. There are some dynamic IP services that willl deal with your not having a static internet IP, but these are far from ideal.

Assuming that is the case, the computers on your LAN are on a non-routable IP network, typically 192.168.0. So the first thing you need to make sure of is what network that is. Then you need to make sure that any servers you have use static IP's on the 192.168.0 network. The router (default gateway) will probably be 192.168.0.1. So your www server could be 192.168.0.2.

You do not want to have the router allocate IP's via DHCP in theis scenario, although if you want that, you need to go into the router and tell it to give out IP's starting at a range above the range of your static IP machines (192.168.50+) for example.

Now that you know you have your www server at 192.168.0.2, you should be able to open a browser on another machine on the lan and get a webpage from it using http://192.168.0.2 as the address. If that works, you're ready for the final step. If that doesn't work, you need to figure out why the IIS server isn't publishing. Make sure that you don't have a firewall blocking port 80 outbound, and check IIS in general.

If it's working on the local LAN, the last piece of the puzzle is to set IP Port forwarding for Port 80 to 192.168.0.2.

This will tell the router to send all traffic that is sent to it on Port 80 (the www well known port) and forward that to your www server.

When that works people outside who know your *real* IP will be able to connect to your server. As I mentioned, setting up DNS is also part of the equation, if you ever plan to have people use www.yourdomain.com

Keep in mind that testing this from your NAT firewall is difficult. You need a machine outside your network that you can use to try to connect back in. Testing on your local lan will typically not work because the NAT router will not let you connect out and back to itself. People that set these things up have servers they can use to test. If you don't you may need a friend to test for you.

Answer 3

You do not need to set up static IPs for all the computers. You can leave DHCP running on the computer, and it will assign IP addresses to all the other computers for you. You simply set up a static IP only for the xbox. Because DHCP normally hands out the IP addresses in numeric order, it is recommended that you assign the static address at the high end of the range of IP addresses you have available. The will reduce the odds that the router decides to hand out the same IP address through DHCP.