Gabriel's shared items

Monday, April 18, 2005

Yay! Successfully configured my router so that my server can be accessed from the www!

Just jotting this down just in case I forgot, and for the benifit of those who are having the same problem.

Ok, here's my background:
OS: Windows XP,
Server: Apache 2
Router: Linksys WRT54G

My problem was getting a webpage hosted on my webserver to be accessible online. After a lot of searching, I found the answer: you simply need to configure the router to forward requests to your computer. Here are the steps:
1) Configure your router by keying in it's IP address on your address bar. (The IP address can be either the Public or Private IP address). You can always find the public IP address from the linked site, or by typing (!IP) on msn msg :), and your router's Private IP address is usually 192.168.1.1 .
2) You will be prompted for the name and password. It is usually blank and admin respectively. You'll need some security features to configure such sensitive stuff.
3) Once you're in, you'll see the setup interface, access the 'applications and gaming' options. You'll see the words 'Port Forwarding'. Configure it according to the Private IP address of the computer your server is installed on (take note, this address will be reassigned by the router each time you restart the computer), and the Port. It has to be the same port which you configure Apache to listen to.

Now you're set! Your server can be viewed by anyone accessing your Public IP address!!!

Now I'll need to concern myself with the security issues :(

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