Hi, My Cable Modem based ISP has apparently disabled inbound http and ftp connections preventing me, as there (residential) client, from hosting my own website on my own PC. They claim they don't allow this because it's a bandwidth issue, but then offer me no option to purchase more bandwidth thus FORCING ME to either use their extremely small amount of free personal webspace that comes with my service, or purchase a larger chunk of webspace from a 3rd party web hosting company. The problem I have with that is, I do not want to upload my personal content to their servers and share it from there as I want only to share this with persons I grant access to (close friends and family). Copying it to their server(s) would give them a copy of it. Granted they have privacy agreements but we all know enforcement of that is next to impossible. (who can access my content on their servers? All their employees? I have no way to know or monitor that...) Does anyone know of a solution SHORT OF GETTING MY OWN T1 LINE etc. that would allow me to SAFELY/SECURELY allow persons of my choosing to connect to my machine through my ISP's firewall? Point to Point VPN solution maybe? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. I may pursue this in a legal venue also as I believe my ISP is violating my rights by not affording me sufficient freedom to do this.

Well, if you don't mind including a port in the address, you can always use this format: http://yoururl:9000 Replace the "9000" with whatever port you want to use, and then set your http server to use that port. Just give people your address including that, or they will not be able to connect as http defaults to port 80. Good Luck!

Thanks Jesse, I did try that and it appears to still be blocked. By the way, in addition, since the PC serving the content is behind my router operating in gateway mode, I had to turn on "Port Forwarding" either for port 80 or whatever other port I assign to my web server in the IIS setup. I could also allow people to dial into my PC through a phone line and access the content that way but would rather not have to do that either (since the bandwidth is so low and I would also have to provide a dedicated phone line for that). I was also thinking of a hybrid solution where I would let my friends & family dial into my PC, log on and then request my computer to make an outbound connection to theirs, but if their ISP blocks inbound connections, it wouldn't solve anything. I would probably have to write a VB application or something to do that ya think? I feel like I'm fighting city hall here!!! They seem to have me sewed up pretty tight. I still think there must be some way to share this content without having to use a 3rd party (my ISP's or other web host's) server... Thanks again for the suggestion...KEEP 'EM COMING PLEASE!!!