Your own .com name address Tutorial

Your own .com or .org name address Tutorial

Problems:
- You want to have control over your internet address
- You want to be able to have control over your internet photo collection
- You want to have music streamed from your home music collection
- you want to host your own website

Solution:
Set up your own home web server with its own .com or .org address.


Setup Requirements
- server or windows based system that is always on (windows in this example)
- dynamic domain registration system
- web server setup of IIS
- web port open for web traffic

My solution in detail
Step 1: Dynamic domain registration

Problem: Your home internet connection is dynamic, meaning it changes when your internet service provider wants to, thus changing your IP address. Since people coming to your site don't want to have to type 192.1........ then you need to make it a named address that will change ip designation in the dns servers that translate numbers into names...

Solution:
navigate to www.dydns.com
- request dynamic dns service
- register what ever .org, .com, et all type of domain name. (in this example I registered deepbluegroove.org)
- install agent software from dyndns.com on server computer (this will detect changes in your ISP designated IP address and send the updated number to dyndns so you can be found)
- If the check mark is green then you are good, if it red, update the ip address button.

Step 2: Set a static IP address for the webserver
- know your router ip address (defaults to 192.168.1.1 on most LANs)
- set your ip address for your webserver
* right click the connection that connects you to the internet, select status.
* select properties, under general tab select internet protocol, select properties
* select use the following ip address: set the ip address to a specific address, I use 192.168.1.222
* subnet mask usually is 255.255.255.0
* gateway is the ip of your router/switch/hub (192.168.1.1 in this example)
* test this connection, you should be able to connect to the internet still. If that does not work, you have set up something wrong

Step 3: Setup IIS webserver software
- run IIS (version 5.1 is included in XP Professional)
* You install this by going to control panels --> Add / Remove Programs --> Add/Remove Windows Components. Select check box next to Internet Information Services. Select details (select world wide web service for web server. If you want mail server keep SMTP, if you don't unselect that option)
* Configure IIS to run, and find the root folder which is by default c:/Inetpub...
* share folders in IIS by creating virtual directories (for example images, html, script)
* If your web server cannot connect to the internet, then this process will not work.
* create index.html page with html to be your home page. Configure IIS to start with this page.
* test your web server by testing it, you should be able to connect to it from the same computer itself. Look up http://192.168.1.222 or http://www.192.168.1.222/

Step 4: Open Web Port on your firewall/router
- Go to your router admin
* go to port forwarding
* enter your static ip address 192.168.1.222, enter start port as 80 and end port 80.
- Go to your software firewall (if you have one), set it to allow connections for port 80.

Step 5: Test your ip address then test your named address.
- test your ip with a computer on the same LAN (http://www.192.168.1.222)
- test your name (the name you registered) www.deepbluegroove.org (this should now work)