Topic: How to get Apache visible to the net behind a router?

[Matternor]

I have Apache up and running; I even registered a domain name with www.dyndns for my up and coming website. The problem that I have now that I cannot find a way to get my router to foward requests to my webserver.

I have a linksys router. I read the manual, and all that it says to do is enable port fowarding (port 80 to port 80, set the IP address of the server and enable it). After doing the proper configuration, all that I get is the router web tools password window. So it seems that the problem is that the router isn't fowarding the packets to the webserver, but taking it as a request to access its web tools.

Does anyone have any tips on configuring my router so that I can get my website visible to the public?

[pnllan]

If I remember Linksys, it should be something like 192.168.1.* (where the router by default is set to 192.168.1.1 and DHCP can serve between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.254). Which Linksys are you using? If you use the Linksys BEFSR41 it already has provisons for DDNS and TZO.

Make sure that you are not pointing to the router, rather to the PC that has Apache servering up HTTP.

With my system, I DO NOT use the DHCP from the router. I use an IP that is in the range of the router (for my PC's).

Example:

My router can server DHCP with IP addresses from 192.168.2.2 through 192.168.2.100. The routers IP is 192.168.2.1 (in Windows IP it becomes the gateway). I turn OFF DHCP in the router, and in Windows assign myself an IP in the range that the router DHCP would use (in this example let's use - 192.168.2.4). Next, I setup Port Forwarding in the router with Port 80 to Port 80. Then, I forward to 192.168.2.4.

This means I have to manually setup my Windows IP as such:

Select - Use the following IP address:

IP Address - 192.168.2.4

Subnet mask - 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway - 192.168.2.1

:End Example

Hope this makes sense.

[Matternor]

The Linksys router model number is wrt55ag (I also don't have a firewall up on the pc or any type of filtering on the router). Everytime I disabled the DHCP server on the router, I lost connection to the internet and the router; I ended up having to reset the router every time I messed with DHCP. After reading the manual about setting up a static ip address, It states that I need to know the dns server address of my ISP; which is something that comcast doesn't seem to be providing. As of now, the ip address on the Apache pc and the ip address for the port fowarding on the router are the same.

[pnllan]

Trying to resolve network issues over the web, at least such as yours, is difficult at best. This is because there are too many factors (ISP rules [e.g. - Port 80 blocked or in interminable timeout], your Windows network setup, router [wireless v. wired] setup, etc...) that anyone (except someone in your area with the same ISP -they might have insight) would have to navigate through.

Someone else might want to delve into this, but I would rather not start (too many considerations to take into account blindly). Rephrased - I don't want to get you jumping through hoops.

My best suggestion is to ask your ISP and/or DynDNS.

Good Luck.
..
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[Matternor]

On my router- I have kept DHCP, but I set a static IP for my webserver; along with manually setting the IP address for the web server. Completely disabling server DHCP gummed up too many things, and I only need a static IP for the webserver. I also tried DMZ for the webserver, but requests still brought up the router web tools page. The end result is that the webserver has a static IP.

After having messed around with my router for a bit, I have to admit that I am not impressed with Linksys at all. I'll click to save configurations which it won't. I have to change one thing then click to save as I have found out that it doesn't save more than one change at a time.

I've done a bit more searching, and found someone with a similar problem in which the reply was that remote management operates on port 80 also; so any http request to the webserver would be picked up by the router as a request to access its webtools. At first, the remote management was disabled. I then enabled it thinking to change the port so that the router wouldn't have any conflict. Still no luck. I then changed the port to 79 on listen and in the servername directives in the httpd.conf file and restarted Apache, along with enabling port forwarding for port 79 in the router. I typed in http://www.<page name>.com:79, and I get a message stating that the port has been disabled for security reasons.

The firewall is off on the webserver, but I think that my requests are getting blocked by the router itself (even though I have supposedly configured it not to). The firewall that is on the router states that it is off, but what is odd is that everytime I click on the page it starts as enabled then quickly clicks to disabled.

[Matternor]

My problem is definitely with the router. I unplugged the router, and connected my webserver directly to the modem. I renabled DHCP on the server connection and updated my IP address on dyndns; so the path is directly clear to the server. I cleared the history on my browser (firefox), and typed in my web address.

Even though the site is local, the browser without any history should still have to access a dns server in order to get an address. No luck, but I received the same message about port 79 being disabled (which I found out is a feature of firefox) so port fowaring was working correctly. In the httpd.conf file I changed the port back to 80, and restarted Apache. I cleared the history of my browser again. Success! My site finally was visible on the internet (I also used IE to find it with success).

I shut down and placed the router back in; along with changing my server's settings back to static IP (like it was before). Cleared the browser's history again, and typed in my site's name only to get the password box for the webtools. So as far as I can tell, eventhough I have port fowarding on port 80 ( I also have remote management disabled), the router isn't passing it through as it sees it as a request to access its webtools.

The question that I have now is does anyone know how to completely disable anything on a linksys model wrt55ag router that would use port 80? My only other idea is that even though I am saving changes, and the router says that it is saving them, it really isn't.

[Jorge]

Some router have ab external port binding aswel.
I know my belkin does!

If you enabled RemoteAdmin disabled it... restorign to factory default might help too... although the later is lots of work

[Matternor]

I emailed linksys, and their reply was to inform me that I needed to enable port fowarding (gogo tech support). I have since done a hard reset on the router, and reconfigured everything with still no luck.

I also began reading reviews from other people that have the same model of router that I have, and the common opinion is not good. Someone even wrote about having the exact same problem that I have been having.

[Matternor]

I have figured out what the problem is. On my main computer, I downloaded Apache 2.0 and configured it to be a webserver (i.e. updated: dns, router, and httpd.conf file). I got the localhost and the ip address of the computer on the lan to show display the 'it works' page. So far everything is going great. Now for the final test, can I get my main computer to display Apache on the internet.

Yes, http://www.fullyconnectedworld.com can be viewed from the internet from my main computer using Apache *while* it is behind a router. So- what was the problem that stopped my other computer from doing this? I stopped a windows service that I shouldn't have. So while I had both computers together on a lan, my 'webserver'(littleboy) computer couldn't see my main computer(bigboy), while the main had no problem seeing my 'webserver' at all. I also switched out my linksys router out for my trusty old D-link. Fyi, the D-link has always given me *great* performance, but didn't have wireless access.

So port fowarding is working on the d-link, but the problem is that once the packet hit my router, it turned into a lan source which my computer couldn't see. So now I have the much easier problem in finding the windows service that allows me to view all computers on a lan, and the computer that I intended to use as a webserver will be fullfilling that role.

Anyways- thanks for the great advice everyone! Even though it has ben frustrating, I have learned a ton this past week trying to get Apache up and running. Once I figure out which service it is that I'll have to enable, I'll post it here if anyone is interested.

[muerte]

[Matternor]

I fixed the problem. It wasn't the router, I turned off the windows service that allows the computer to see other computers on the network. I'm running my main computer right now as my webserver until I figure out how to fix the problem on my 'webserver' computer. But since I am also in the process of learning PHP and MYsql, it could be a bit.

Thanks for the help though.

[muerte]

You're welcome

[Matternor]

For the sake of anyone else having the problem that I had, I am going to post what I did here for future posterity.

The problem:
Webserver could not see any other computers on lan, so anything that came in from the router (which would have a lan address) was not visible to the computer. What I did was control panel -> system -> computer name ->
changed the compupter description ( to something different) -> click on button labeled change; changed the computer name and workgroup name back to 'workgroup'. Under the computer name tab on the system window, I clicked on the Network ID button. I restarted the computer, and my webserver was able to view incoming traffic from router. But, I was unable to access the resources of the other computer on the lan.

Since all the I set out to do was to get my webserver to view packets that came from the lan, I stopped there.

I want to note that this was something that I did *after* I tried port fowarding and making sure that my config file was correct.

[clariceoshea]

here are the end points

problem: almost solved

Linksys router E1200 with 2 computers connected

whatismyip = 72.47.28.27
port forwarding

killer is that http://72.47.28.27/phpinfo.php doesn't work


telnet on the following doesn't work
192.168.1.110:3389
192.168.1.111:3389
192.168.1.110:3390
192.168.1.111:3390
72.47.28.27:3389
72.47.28.27:3390

I cannot get the following to work
http://72.47.28.27:3389/phpinfo.php
http://72.47.28.27:3390/phpinfo.php

Landon-PC = http://72.47.28.27:3389/phpinfo.php
Internal LAN = http://192.168.1.110:3389/phpinfo.php

Precision-380 = http://72.47.28.27:3390/phpinfo.php
Internal LAN = http://192.168.1.111:3390/phpinfo.php


http://72.47.28.27:3389/phpinfo.php
http://72.47.28.27:3390/phpinfo.php

http://72.47.28.27/phpinfo.php

[clariceoshea]

I am using Fedora 20 in both machines

Linksys tech support is very faint

[clariceoshea]

normally I have to use port 8080 because ( I am told ) the ISP requires this

http://72.47.28.27:8080/phpinfo.php no router

[Baldwin Halle]

I have a router problem. But i can't fix it. They told there is some formalities but i am not aware about this.