I would like to run a web & FTP server from my little home network. I have a cable modem running to a D-link router to 3 computers. I would like to make one a linux box that would be the server. My question is how would ppl out side my network see the server? When I visit whatismyipaddress.com it come back with 25.54.98.165 but my DHCP server is giving my box an ip of 192.168.3.200. How do I go about letting ppl see the server (and only the server) behind the router? Would I have to set the server up between the cable modem and router? This is just a fun little project for me. It doesn’t need to be extremely robust or secure at its just some for me to play with and learn a little more about networking. Thanks for any help Dino

Okay, you have one public IP address. This will now become the address of your web server. You can do one of two things: 1) Place the server in your router's DMZ zone. The firewall is ignored on the DMZ port (use a firewall on the server or regret doing so). 2) In the router's config, forward ports on the webserver's listening port (default 80) to the linux server. In both cases, your existing network is left alone with its private IP addressing scheme. Your router is performing all the tricks for you.

If you set your server to the DMZ, all incoming traffic from the outside will be forwarded to your server (NOT GOOD). Just set your router to forward traffic on port 80 (for web access), and ports 20 and 21 (for FTP) to your linux server. :-)