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I am hosting a website on my local network for our local Fire Explorers Program. The website is located here. I am hosting the site using Drupal 7 and IIS 7.5 running on Windows Server 2008 R2.

The problem I am having is that ever since upgrading our modem I have not been able to access the website from within my local network, which is strange because if I am not connected to my network it loads just fine. I can also access my remote desktops from both within and outside my network just fine, so it is only the website.

A prime example is on my phone when I am connected to Wi-Fi my phone uses that for data, which causes the website to not load, however as soon as I disconnect from Wi-Fi and use data from my 4G connection it loads almost instantly. Another is as soon as I get to school and use school Internet it will load right away. I am stumped as to what is wrong.

My current site binding is set like this:

enter image description here

Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
Brandan Schmitz
  • 31

2 Answers2

1

Your internal network is 10.0.0.0/24, and this accessing the internet behind 73.242.28.179. You have portforwarding set up so that incoming connections to 73.242.28.179 on port 80 are forwarded to 10.0.0.25.

And, to enable this to work with a host name, you have www.ighfdexplorers.com resolving to 73.242.28.179.

The problem is that when your internal machines attempt to access www.ighfdexplorers.com, it resolves to 73.242.28.179 and they try to talk to the external interface of your router.

Some routers will allow this (your previous one did), and will recognise that the connection should loop back through the router to the internal server on 10.0.0.25. Most will not however. This feature is called "nat loopback" or "hairpin nat" or "nat reflection".

Other than replacing the router with one that supports this feature, the alternative is to have www.ighfdexplorers.com resolve to 10.0.0.25 for those on the 10.0.0.0/24 network.

The common way to do this is to have an internal DNS server that resolves www.ighfdexplorers.com to 10.0.0.25 and then forwards any other queries to internet based DNS servers.

If you cannot set up an internal DNS server (it could reside on 10.0.0.25 too, and does not need to be internet facing), then the less manageable way is to edit the hosts file on each internal machine (this is not easy/possible with mobile devices).

On Windows this is at C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and you would add an entry

10.0.0.25 www.ighfdexplorers.com

On Linux, this is at /etc/hosts

Giacomo1968
  • 58,727
Paul
  • 61,193
0

So I have realized that the router I have (an Arris TG1682G from Comcast) does not support NAT Loopbacks. As a temporary fix I decided to just resolve the website to my servers internal IP address by editing my Windows Hosts File. Tomorrow I am going to set my TG1682G to Bridge Mode and use an extra server I have as a router with the function of a NAT Loopback. Thanks to those who assisted me, and I hope that this will assist anyone else that may be having a similar issue.

Brandan Schmitz
  • 31