Google & Firefox

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 19 May 2009, 01:28

If you do it'll be with the initial contacting of a web site.
O2's DNS servers can be flakey at times, we were getting timeouts and failed page loads.
I'm running a DNS server locally (rather than using my router to do it, but it's basically the same thing), so set that to forward DNS requests to openDNS, and things have improved greatly.

ellevie · Post by **ellevie** » 19 May 2009, 01:35

Xac wrote:I'm running a DNS server locally....

Do you need to do that to enable you to use your computer as a HTTP server which I think you mentioned elsewhere ?

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 19 May 2009, 15:00

ellevie wrote:
Xac wrote:I'm running a DNS server locally....
Do you need to do that to enable you to use your computer as a HTTP server which I think you mentioned elsewhere ?

No, I do it because I'm running a windows domain.
You can run a local dns server to make it easier to view your own websites from within your home network, or you could just add the internal address of your website to the hosts file on every PC.
Alternatively, you could VPN to an external network and view it that way (I believe Jim does this), which has the advantage of showing you what other users experience, but is more complex to configure.

Say you had a website running on your PC with the address of www.wibble.com
Your computer has an IP address of 192.168.0.100 (for example).
Your web server on your home network has an IP address of 192.168.0.101
For other people to access your website, you need to register the domain wibble.com and have it's DNS hosted externally, most likely dynamic DNS (unless your ISP provides static IP addresses) so it's updated whenever your router's IP address changes.
This will enable people to get to your router, you then have to tell the router to forward port 80 traffic (HTTP) to your web server.
That then gets people to your webserver, and it does the rest.

Now, if you're sat at your PC and browse to www.wibble.com, the DNS request goes to your router (assuming you've not changed anything), and is forwarded to your ISP's DNS servers to resolve. It gets your external IP address, and your browser shows an error saying it can't load the page.
This is because, clever as routers are, they don't generally apply port forwarding rules to internal requests, so it doesn't know that it should direct you to the web server.

Instead, what you have to do is get the PC to resolve www.wibble.com to the internal IP address of the web server (192.168.0.101)
Simplest way is modify the c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (or c:\winnt) and add:
192.168.0.101 www.wibble.com

or if you're running DNS locally, add an A record for www.wibble.com

ellevie · Post by **ellevie** » 19 May 2009, 19:48

Thanks for that Xac.
I did a few experiments hosting HTTP web servers on my laptop where the web pages were accessed by entering "localhost" as the web address. I was able to access it externally using my current IP address.

I read somewhere that you could set up your own DNS server and connect it to the global DNS network to publish your domain name and that this could also be used to get around the dynamic DNS problem.

Does your web site handle much traffic ?

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 19 May 2009, 20:03

Not these days.
I used to run the local airsoft site's forum and it was quite busy, but they took it on themselves so I've closed that down.
Now I mainly use it for experimentation and study, playing around with streaming media etc, and for checking my email from work and on my mobile.
It's handy for hosting images used in forum posts

I'm going to be using it to promote my photography services soonish though.

ellevie · Post by **ellevie** » 19 May 2009, 22:26

I suppose one drawback to using a home based website is that you need to keep it live 24/7 otherwise the the stuff you host will be unavailable when you're off line. Google Sites looks like a strong alternative to a home based site. Very easy to compose as well.

I'll gook forward to seeing your new photographic site.

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 19 May 2009, 23:11

Well I keep my pc on all the time anyway, it's running VM ware with a couple of virtual servers.
Means I have total control over my email etc too.

Tested out Windows 2007 server a few months back and was impressed, so might try Windows 7.

ellevie · Post by **ellevie** » 20 May 2009, 19:46

I've never used XP or Vista so I might end up leapfrogging them to Windows 7. I would need to up-spec my hardware --- I've been using a 500MHz Laptop for the last 9 years with Windows 98. I recently upgraded to Win2000 SP4 which is surprisingly fasteer than Win98. Word loads in well under one second whereas on Win98 it seems to take forever.

If you use Windows Server 2xxx, does this automatically connect you to the Global DNS network and publish your domain name ?

Xaccers · Post by **Xaccers** » 20 May 2009, 23:30

ellevie wrote: If you use Windows Server 2xxx, does this automatically connect you to the Global DNS network and publish your domain name ?

No.
You have to register your domain and inform the company what the IP address of your domain's DNS servers are.
If you have a static IP address, then you can go ahead and do that, but it will cause isues because your DNS server will be inside your home network.
You'll have to configure your router to forward DNS requests from the internet to your DNS server.
You'll have to have an A record for www with your external IP address so people can find your website, but that will then give you the issue of how computers inside your home network find your website as they can't use the external address (so you're back to updating hosts files or using a VPN out to come back in).

If you're on ADSL with a dynamic IP address, then you can't do it because the DNS server information for your domain will no longer be correct once your external IP address changes.

What I've done is the following:
Registered my domain, and set the DNS servers to be easyDNS.com's as I pay them a few quid for their dynamic DNS service.
Anything at my domain gets resolved to my current external IP address.

Within my network, I've got a w2K3 active directory, with a DNS server.
That server is set to be authorative so it doesn't forward any requests for machines on my domain out to internet DNS servers.
This enables me to have the internal DNS server to resolve computers on my home network, while the easyDNS server resolves to my external address.
It means if I have someone come over with their laptop, they can connect to my home network and use the internet, but also be able to connect to other computers on my home network (so they can print for instance).

ellevie · Post by **ellevie** » 21 May 2009, 20:20

Thanks for that Xac. You're a mine of information.
I have an old 386 with a LAN card that I have linked to the laptop previously. I will probably use it to do some experiments along these lines.