I have 2 PCs set up to share an ADSL connection, and have a D-Link ADSL router. I am hoping to run a website. I have a question about port forwarding. I've read on this forum about configuring the router to forward requests to port 80 on the router to the machine running the web software, but I'm just wondering if this affects my web surfing on either PC? If I forward port 80 requests to machine A, will my websurfing on machine B be affected? I'm thinking if I visit a website (and connect to the default port of that site, port 80) will the replies to that website be incorrectly forwarded to machine A? Sorry if this is a dumb question. I must admit I don't have a lot of knowledge about what goes on behind the scenes when I visit a website!

won't be a problem ,just make sure machine A is set correctly in port forwarding with the router and leave machine b out of it.

That's not a problem because the response to port 80 are also tied into the address of the appropriate machine. Thus if you attempt to get a response to Machine A thru port 80 it will not only interpret the port but also the address of the request which will be to Machine A and Machine B have nothing to do with it. And visa-versa. D

Thank you both for your great replies! It sounds like machine B will have no problems. However, would I still be able to surf the web from Machine A, while it is running the web software? If I turn off the web software, without removing the port redirection, will web surfing still work on Machine A? Or will I need to stop the web software and remove the redirection to be able to surf with this PC? Thanks for your help.

You'll be able to surf without any issues either, you're PC will be listening for incoming tcp requests on port 80. It won't interefere with your sufing. While surfing, you make an 'outbound' request to another server on tcp port 80, but it will come back to you on a random port (somewhere around 1000-4000). Load up a webpage and from a command prompt type NETSTAT -N you'll see on "their" you are connected to 80, but on "you're" side you're not.

Thanks heaps for your reply - that makes a lot of sense. Everyone's help is much appreciated.