Member Avatar for howie_23

Hey everyone,
I'm new to these forums and also new to web hosting but I've got a quick question. I'm using an Actiontec GT701 as my DSL modem and router. I'm running apache2 and I'm using virtualHosts to host three different sites. I can access the sites just fine from work but whenever I try to access the hosts by their domain names (www,domainname.com) from within my network I get my actiontec web management login. I can type localhost and get one of my sites to come up but not all three. Is accessing sites hosted locally impossible w/ the actiontec? I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by krazytekn0

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Member Avatar for TheNNS

Is accessing sites hosted locally impossible w/ the actiontec? I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks.

It should be.

I think the your network computers are trying to find the websites out on the internet, the router should redirect them to your webserver. is your server behind NAT?

Member Avatar for howie_23

is your server behind NAT?

Yea the Actiontec does NAT. I've found solutions about updating host files on the computer I'm trying view the page on so that could work but I'm looking for something a little easier so I don't have to do that w/ every computer on my network.

Member Avatar for krazytekn0

If the actiontec were to forward internal traffic coming to it to another computer on the network you would never be able to do any administration on the actiontec again. The router doesn't know that you typed blahblah.com instead of 192.168.X.X it just knows that a request is coming over port 80 from inside the network.

There are a few ways to bypass this, set up a local DNS server and plug that into the computers on your network. Or configure the hostname of the computer you want to be the server (in windows this is the computer name) to what you want.

Like if my website is at fooXYZ.com and I have the port forwarding set up then anyone going to fooXYZ.com from outside the network will get my server. BUT you have to name the computer on the local network fooXYZ.com for that to work locally. Or you can just name it fooXYZ the local computers will access your server when they type http://fooXYZ/.

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