jumpingbeans

OK.....I am planning on hosting a few websites. I set up IIS and I have also set up port forwarding on my router to access the machine with IIS. When an external user types in my domain name that i own, say 1234.com how will that request know to hit my machine? I have set up the website - added the IP ( of the machine ) and added the description. Register.com is the registrar and currently the DNS servers point to theirs. Do I change the DNS server address to point to my static IP ( from my ISP ) ?
I can access the site internally bit not externally so I know I have missed a step.
If anyone can help or suggest a good book to get please help....Much appreciated.

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joofoo

yes you will need the DNS servers pointing to the IP address of your machine.

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joofoo

jumpingbeans

I have also been told to leave the DNS servers as they are and change the A record to point to my IP. This way the current DNS server listed will still resolve the IP. Which is correct? And thanks for the input!!!

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Boner

You will need to add an A record that refers to your IP address (your static, Internet-accessible IP address).

This record needs to be added to the primary DNS server that is handling your domain. You don't need to change your DNS server, keep the current one and just add the A record.

JohnnyRoyale

Two ways to do this:

1. If your IIS machine has a real IP. If this is the case, you need the dns to point to the machine directly (see Boner's post). So for this, you need a record like:

www.1234.com A 123.123.123.123

which points the requeting web browser to your machine, if the 123.123.123.123 is the IP address of your machine.

2. If your using NAT/DHCP. In this case, the server's IP address is a fake, and requests have to be forwarded through the router. So here, you setup the DNS record to point to the OUTSIDE address on the router (the one the ISP gave you). So, you do that, then you setup the router to allow the port through, and (if it's a linksys, or somethig like that), you setup port forwarding, which says requests on a port (port 80 for web requests), get forwarded to the internal IP address.

Based on what you've described, you probably have the second item here, so you should check your router instructions on port forwarding & triggering. Post up some more info (like your router type, the ip on your machine) and this'll be easier to figure out.

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