I know this topic is quite old, but, nevertheless, I am doing this in a first time and I have some troubles with it. I try to open public access to my sites, hosted on IIS 7.5 web server on my Windows 7 operation system.
What have I already done:
1. Read a lot of documentation/articles about site hosting, for example:
• www.codeproject.com
• www.sevenforums.com
• forums.asp.net
Besides those links I read Russian documentations, but, since this resource's preferred language is English, I will not post those links.
2. I requested and got public static IP from my provider.
3. Checked this IP value by www.whatismyip.com
4. Hosted simplest site (just some static html page) on my IIS server.
5. Forwarded port 80 on my router:
• Configured virtual server to redirect all requests sent to my public static IP to local IP (192.168.0.133 in my case) of my PC where IIS server is running.
• Checked my port 80 on this site. Port is open.
• This is my virtual server configuration:
When I change Interface from <All> to WAN – port is closed
When I add public/private port (end) 80 – port is closed
When I change protocol to TCP/UDP – port is closed
Server name can be any. I even wrote my domain name as server name value – the same result.
When I set remote IP value to my public static IP – port is closed
6. Checked IIS server by typing http://192.168.0.133/ in browser's address bar. My hosted html page displayed correctly, so server is running.
7. Configured windows firewall to pass all incoming requests by starting firewall from command line and adding new inbound rule, as described here.
• Tried to turn firewall off but result is still the same – could not connect, so I suggest my inbound rule configuration is fine.
8. Turned on all windows IIS features.
9. Got free domain name on www.noip.com.
• Successfully pinged domain name. My public static IP was displayed.
10. Flushed DNS cache by ipconfig /flushdns from command line.
But, nevertheless, after all these steps I still get Could not connect to remote server error by requesting my public IP in web browser.
P.S. There was a moment when I got my router's home page, when requested public IP, and a friend of mine also got this page. As Google said, this was some kind of port forwarding error so I think I fixed it, but now I just get could not connect error.
WHAT AM I MISSING ???
Best Answer
The problem you are running into is caused by your router not supporting hairpin NAT. A quick search here pulls up some great answers: Unable to outside access service from inside LAN
Basically, your router doesn't know that it needs to convert your request for the external IP to the internal IP of your server. The quickest "fix" is to create an entry in your hosts file.