Apache problem

[R Scott Belford]

Here's the thing.  When you are at home, your computer already knows 
that you have named it home.happy.  It stores this information in a 
little file in /etc called hosts.  You type home.happy in your browser 
window, and your os knows that name is the local apache page.  If you 
had other machines in your network that you wanted to access by name 
rather than the ip address, you could put them this file.  (You probably 
understand that an ip address is kind of like a phone number for the 
inernet world.)  Then when you typed their name (I have one named debby 
who runs debian), your browser knows to read your /etc/hosts file to see 
what ip address to "call" debby at.  This works on your local network 
because you are at home using private ip addresses.

The internet is too big for everyone to have all the computers listed in 
their own personal /etc/hosts file.   Not everyone has an /etc/hosts 
file.  It is too hard to remember the ip address for yahoo.  As a 
result, if you own a "public" domain, meaning you can reach it from 
anywhere, you must have its name hosted on what is called a Domain Name 
Server.  These are the computers around the world that people like your 
isp maintain.  You could, too.  When you type the name of the site you 
want, your os is set to check a DNS to see where in the heck to find 
this site (by ip address.)

So, why can't you type home.happy at work and get your machine?  As has 
been pointed out, home.happy is not a public address, primarily.  Your 
browser checks a DNS for it, and your DNS says "hey, never heard of 
it."  You can reach it by ip address, though.  Your isp owns a big block 
of public IP addresses to dynamically or randomly assign its customers.  
If you have a cable modem, it is dynamically assigned.   If you have 
dsl, it may be statically assigned.  If you dialup, it is dynamically 
assigned.  Run ipconfig to see what your's is.  Type http://[your ip 
address] and you'll get your machine (if it wasn't reassigned on your 
way to work or if port 80 isn't blocked by your isp.)  You can also 
register a domain of your choice, name your computer that, have a dns 
tell the world what ip address to find you at, and pow, you are 
connected to home by way of the domain of your choice.

scott


On Sunday, January 13, 2002, at 03:10  PM, Rodney Kanno wrote:

> Hi Warren,
>
> I disabled the Mandrake firewall and am now using Monmotha's firewall 
> but still cannot connect to Apache from outside computers..any other 
> suggestions/ideas?
>
> Rodney
>
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