Hi everyone,

Am confounded by a problem that I am having with hosting Apache server or Personal Websharing on my Mac OS X (10.3.9). Here's the situation:

- Using DSL so I've gotten DynDNS service which detects the Dynamic IP address for my computer
- the Mac has a static IP address of 192.168.1.10
- the WRT54G has a local IP address of 192.168.1.1

Now, when an outside friend types in the url from DynDNS they do not connect to the "Hello World" webpage that is currently being served up by Personal Web Sharing. They simply get nothing.

I've done all of the port forwarding (from www.portforward.com and from the Linksys manual) and I've given static IPs to all of the machines on the network. I don't know what is going wrong but one clue may be that when I look beneath the "Status" tab and click on "Router", for Internet Configuration Type, I see an IP address of 192.168.2.10.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

P.S. I can also ping the dynamic name/url by going to Administration -> Diagnostics -> Ping Test on the router; typed in the url (dynamic host name) and it went fine..."O% Packet Loss".

P.P.S. Someone else on another board said that I also need to enable port forwarding on my DSL modem. Is this necessary? The modem I have is a SpeedStream 4200.

You shouldn't need to enable anything on your DSL modem.

You mention that you have the Port Forwarding turned on, but just to be clear, you have to ensure that requests coming in on external port 80 are being forwarded to internal port 80 at IP address 192.168.1.10 - your computer.

I'm not familiar with that exact router model, but they all work generally the same. Some call port forwarding 'applications' or it's hidden under an 'advanced' tab or even 'security' or whatever. Once you have this configured, then anyone from outside your network should be able to type http://yourname.dyndns.com or whatever, and that will go to your ip address, port 80, which your router should forward to your computer's ip address, port 80.

Now if you have all this set up and it's not working... some ISPs are now blocking port 80. If that's the case then you have to try another port, like 8080 is used as a secondary webserver port. That does complicate things a further step though depending on your router and webserver.

-Stephanie

p.s. I wouldn't worry about the IP address you're seeing under the router/status page. If you are getting to your router with http://192.168.1.1 then you've got the internal stuff configured ok.

p.p.s. Almost forgot as this is one of the more obvious ones but... when you have your webserver running can you view the hello world page, by going to http://192.168.1.10 as well as http://127.0.0.1 ?

Thanks Stephanie for your reply! Here is what's happening:

You mention that you have the Port Forwarding turned on, but just to be clear, you have to ensure that requests coming in on external port 80 are being forwarded to internal port 80 at IP address 192.168.1.10 - your computer.

This is the part that I am not sure about.

I'm not familiar with that exact router model, but they all work generally the same. Some call port forwarding 'applications' or it's hidden under an 'advanced' tab or even 'security' or whatever. Once you have this configured, then anyone from outside your network should be able to type http://yourname.dyndns.com or whatever, and that will go to your ip address, port 80, which your router should forward to your computer's ip address, port 80.

Right...and, at this point, nothing is happening. I think that my friend is simply getting a blank page or it simply keeps on trying to connect.

Now if you have all this set up and it's not working... some ISPs are now blocking port 80. If that's the case then you have to try another port, like 8080 is used as a secondary webserver port.

I've already called Bell about this and they say that they are not blocking anything. (It seems like their tech support dept. is absolutely blase about whatever you want to do these days! That doesn't mean they know what the problem is, though!)

p.s. I wouldn't worry about the IP address you're seeing under the router/status page. If you are getting to your router with http://192.168.1.1 then you've got the internal stuff configured ok.

Yep, that's not a problem at all.

p.p.s. Almost forgot as this is one of the more obvious ones but... when you have your webserver running can you view the hello world page, by going to http://192.168.1.10 as well as http://127.0.0.1 ?

Again, not a problem, It works with both urls...I'm not having any problems whatsoever with seeing either the WRT54G or the Hello World! page.

I've already called Bell about this and they say that they are not blocking anything. (It seems like their tech support dept. is absolutely blase about whatever you want to do these days! That doesn't mean they know what the problem is, though!)


OK, as someone who worked for bell tech support, #1, most don't know what to do if they get to work and the computer doesn't have the "press ctrl alt del to login". #2, if you're getting a private IP on the inside (you said 192.168.2.10), that means bell is NATing you from the real net.

go to www.whatismyip.com and have your friend type that IP in not the dyndns one. If he connects to that, horray. if not, then you're out of luck, and call bell tech till you get to a tier 2 and tell them you need to vpn to work, and that's the whole point of your 'net connection, blah blah.

On a good day, you'll get a static mapping to a real external IP. on a bad day you'll be told that you have to pay an extra $xx a month for the static IP.
For the love of Steve, don't say you're trying to run any kind of server (except for maybe game) to a Tier 2 person.

If they're not willing to give or you're not willing to pay, start looking for another ISP.
Sorry to be blunt, but that's all there is to it...

A suggestion.. just to test. Take the router out of the equation. See if the site goes live then.

This way you'll know whether it lies with the Internet Connection or the Router.

If your router is displaying 192.168.2.10 then you are 192.168.1.10, you are on a different subnet. Double check that this isn't the case.. otherwise it won't work.

It looks like his router is showing his "internet" ip is 192.168.2.10, common practice for the PPPoE that DSL providers use now.
Internally NAT'd and firewalled up the yin yang so only usfull things are surfing/chat/email.

to enforce the "no servers" policy for the gifted, and to protect the not so gifted from themselves ;)

I guess networking is a matter of trial and error.

Ok, here is what happened.

A. Puzzled over what Stephanie meant by internal port 80 and external port 80; managed to get into the Speedstream 4200 modem's config page and, as I remembered, there is no port forwarding option. @#$
B. Took pcronin's suggestion of using http://www.whatismyip.com and asked my friend to type that number in. Didn't work. @#$%
C. Took the router out of the equation; this was done a couple of weeks back and my friend was able to get to my Hello World webpage. This time around, it didn't work. @#$%^
D. Puzzled over pcronin's PPPoE's comment since I am using not using that on my Mac as per a Bell tech support's suggestion way-back-when when I was setting up my Sympatico account. My friend commented that that shouldn't matter and that his router was using PPPoE.
I then checked my router and it was using "Automatic Configuration - DHCP". Hrmmm...proverbial light bulb goes off. I changed that to "PPPoE" despite not exactly recalling what my Bell password was...had a slight :eek: when my lapse of memory was confirmed...changed that by changing the case of the password :D ...and it worked! My friend can now see my "Hello World" page. :D

Thanks everyone! Now, on to tackle the most powerful blogging software system out there - WordPress!