cannot get outside world to view site

[RikoS]

Hello all. I am glad I found these forums! There seems to be a lot of useful content.

I am brand-spanking-new to the world of self-hosted Apache web server. I have been trying for days now to get it working but I cannot get any other computers to see my site.

I obtained a free DNS from freedns.afraid.org and have it pointing to my ip address (it is static) I then configured Apache httpd.conf:

- Listen 80
- ServerName btc.us.to:80

I can view the site from the pc Apache is running on via the freedns address (http://btc.us.to). But my laptop wont view the site.

I have also added 127.0.0.1 btc.us.to my hosts file
as well: my actual ip and btc.us.to

What am I doing wrong? Am I missing something? I have tried everything I can think of. I have done so many search terms and view so many forums and websites but I am still at a complete loss! I'm going crazy! please help!

[penders]

Is your laptop outside of your local network?

Presumably your local network (and web server) are behind a router? Have you set up port forwarding on the router to send all port 80 requests to your web server (using the local IP address of the web server)?

[RikoS]

I hadn't set up port forwarding on my router before. I just did and it's still not working. All HTTP requests (port 80) are being routed to the PC on the network that is hosting the apache server (192.168.0.100)

My laptop is not outside of the network, it is connected to the network.

[RikoS]

no further ideas of what the problem could be? I was hoping to get this resolved! It'd driving me crazy!

[penders]

If you set up the laptop to connect using the the local IP address (HOSTS file) it presumably works OK?

Any other local firewall on the web server machine?

Just ruling out... some routers (notably the BT HH3 - in the UK) do not support "loopback", meaning that you cannot access a local PC via the external IP of the local network - you have no choice but to use the local IP in this case (yep, it's crazy). Accessing via the external IP from an external PC is OK however. Just ruling this out, as it could send you in circles otherwise! What router do you have?

[RikoS]

I added it to hosts on the laptop and it works. No I don't have any other firewall running on the server pc. Your right about the loop back thing, my router doesn't seem to support it. I can access the site from the laptop via local ip, but not external.

That being said I know that the site still isn't available to the outside as I try to access it from my cell phone and it doesn't resolve.

[phranque]

have you tried nslookup to see if the dns is resolving the domain name to an ip address?
have you tried a traceroute?
can you ping the domain or ip?

if you can't ping then http won't work either.

[RikoS]

yes and they all resolve to my ip.

Now I just uninstalled windows from the server pc and installed ubuntu 11. I got apache installed, now I just gotta figure out how to set it up again.... not as simple as windows. I'm hoping (but doubting) that the problem had something to do with windows.

[phranque]

your ip address is probably your router.
did your traceroute show any hops past your router into your local network?

[RikoS]

no it did not do anything past my IP address.

So the trace route should show it going to the local ip of my server machine? (192.168.0.100)?

[lucy24]

Is it an ordinary, off-the-shelf router? It's very common for them to have some type of firewall built in. Is there anything you can disable?

[phranque]

it may or may not show the internal ip address(es) but it should show the hop, possibly with asterisks instead of details.
i would do a search on the model number for your modem/router and see if the manufacturer or ISP or others have published a detailed procedure to allow incoming http requests.
perhaps that port/protocol has been disabled.

[RikoS]

@Lucy - It is an ordinary, off-the-shelf router. It is a d-link WBR-1310 (manual: [scribd.com...] Firewall is not enabled.

@phranque - I don't think it has been disabled... I have gone to the port forwarding options in the router cpanel and have forwarded port 80 to the ip address of the server pc.