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Currently I have a very standard home setup: cable modem, wireless router DHCP's to ISP to get public IP, then assigns non-routeable IPs to each LAN appliance (wireless or not) which are NATted.

However, I now want to have a public IP so I can run network services from home. My ISP sold me one, but I want to preserve my home network. What's the standard way to do this? I have an Ubuntu server with ISPConfig; that box should get the static IP.

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migrated from serverfault.com Aug 18 '12 at 6:15

2 Answers

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You got a “permanent” public IP, but you still need the NAT infrastructure that besides multiplying your single public IP into the required private IPs it also adds a pretty good layer of security. In order to run services from your house some routers let you establish a demilitarized zone (DMZ) and/or set port forwarding plus running a firewall. Then if you want to i.e. run an HTTP server and your public IP receives an externally generated request on port 80 the router will route that request to the router’s port where your HTTP server is located, next your HTTP server honors the request etc etc… if I were you considering a home environment I’d try to do this on hardware, if your router can’t do it I’d replace it.

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You mention ISPConfig and Ubuntu, so you are setting up a webserver. You will just need to forward port 80 to the appropriate IP address, where that address is either setup through a DHCP reservation in the router, or a static IP address that falls outside of the DHCP pool on your network.

May I ask what you are setting this up for? Are you just wanting to play around with web hosting to learn, or are you planning on selling web hosting?

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I don't want to use DHCP because if the IP address changes, my forwarding will break; so yes, I assigned it a static IP outside the DHCP pool and forwarded port 80. And to answer your question: I'm setting up a web server in my home so I don't rely on hosting services. – Fixee Sep 14 '12 at 4:08
You can do the same thing through DHCP reservations. The router just gives the same address to the same machine every time it sends a request. Hosting is cheap, and any hosting solution is likely to be more resilient and reliable than what you can do at home. And usually cheaper than the upgrade to business class service. Are you really sure you want to take this on? – NeedAGeekIndy Sep 14 '12 at 5:31
I'm running more than a web server; I have sshd and smtp servers too. I can log into my home network from anywhere via ssh giving me access to home devices (eg, home security cams). Plus, it's fun. – Fixee Sep 14 '12 at 7:18
If you are doing it for fun, that is one thing. But bear in mind that it is always going to break and you will have significant downtime. – NeedAGeekIndy Sep 17 '12 at 16:39

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