web hosting from verizon fios connection with linux (at home)

[blackhawk]

hello everyone, this is my first post to this forum and i am hoping someone can clear some things up for me. I have been doing some researching and i find this site to be extremely helpful, however i am unclear on a few things...I know that it is possible to provide services such as web hosting from your home linux box especially if you have a high speed connection what i am unclear about is the steps on how to do it. I know that i am going to need to configure some things first but what i am wondering is, can this be done on a high speed connection with only 1 network card or do you need two network interfaces?I know that in order to provide services such as web or ssh to the outside (other users) you have to have ip forwarding enabled, i am just unclear what needs to be done next...1) Do you need two network interfaces to provide services to outside users?2) How can you go about getting a public ip address from your isp? 3) I am on a fios connection so i believe that my ip address assigned to me is DHCP not static so i have heard that there are applications i can use to it goes to the same DNS hostname? If anyone knows of which apps i would need, and if you can elaborate on this for me i would greatly appreciate it.4) I have experience with iptables however, i have never used rules with nat or masquerading variables or prerouting or postrouting, so i know that i will need these for firewall uses however i am unclear on exactly what i need to configure...What i am looking for in a way i guess is for friends on mine to be able to ssh into my linux box and to be able to run a webserver, however i have never used ip forwarding and rules and options like nat and masquerading for iptables so i am not really sure where to start..Also i would like to find a way that if i was to purchase a .com that i could host it at home however i do not have a static ip address so i don't know how i can host a website if my ip address is changing every couple of months..I have read some of the tutorials on basic linux home networking on this site and i saw the part about getting a public ip address however i got a bit confused... If anyone could tell me how to get started maybe provide some links and tell me what i am going to need to do i would really appreciate the advice.Thank you all for your time.

[bcoffield]

I'm new to this community as well, but have some experience with the home networking topic. I have an old computer that I use to serve web pages and can ssh into. It has only one network interface. I'll try to explain how I set this up.

1) You need to find a way to locate your network from the outside world. At first I had a dynamic IP from my internet provider, but my Belkin router has a feature that links a domain name to the dynamically assigned IP via dyndns.com. You just create a domain name (i.e. something.dyndns.com) and the router will push updates to dyndns.com, telling it what your dynamic IP is at that moment. You should look in your router's configuration and see if that's possible. If not, call your cable provider and purchase a static IP address. I use comcast and they just made me switch to a "business" plan and charged me $5/mo more.

2) Forward tcp requests on port 80 and 22 to your server's internal IP address. Your router likely gives each computer in your network a dynamic IP. While you can assign static IP addresses within your network, it will be easier at first to just use ifconfig to see what the server's IP address is. So go into your router's config page and forward those ports to the server's IP. (FYI it's not very secure to use default ports for outward facing servers ... eventually you'll want to configure your server to use some higher ports). Hopefully if your router can do this, you shouldn't have to mess with iptables at all!!

3) Now that packets are getting to the right destination (your server), you need server software. Install apache (or glassfish) for the web server, and install openssh-server. Your apache works if the web browser shows "IT WORKS!". After that you can put your html in /var/www/.

These steps assume you have a fairly recent router, and that you don't want your server to act as a firewall/router. If you want your server to act as a router, you'll need two network interfaces (I'm trying to do this now, with not much success!).

Those steps are pretty vague and have no actual commands because I don't know what distribution you plan to use. If there are problems please follow up.

[redhead]

becoffield, if you're looking for an introduction to iptqables and how a NAT firewall is setup with it, I have an old firewall I once used which works with kernel 2.4.x but not with 2.6.x, at the time I wrote it I did myself a favor and used alot of time to describe he thoughts put into each ruel in it.You can take a glance at it, and see if some of the description it holds gives you any pointers.http://redhead.dk/download/pub/stuff/firewall-script