LebGeeks

MAD

Member

Home Hosting Server

Hi geeks
I am building a webapp that will be used by about 100 users only, but i need them to be able to access it anywhere. and i want to host it at home on an ubuntu desktop i don't want it to be hosted online.
so can i do it without a Real ip ?
i mean using dyndns or something similar.
i already bought the domain name i just need a way to make my desktop accessible to the users via internet.
thank you for helping :)

scorz

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

Yeah it can be done.
You will need to forward ports in your router of course (port 80 or whatever webserver is listening to)
Be sure that remote router web-management is disable and change internal port if you want (8080 is the easiest one to remember).
I am not sure you can use dyndns and dyndns-like if you have a domain name for free. You will need to pay some extra bucks per month.
I think it will be something.dyndsn.com (dydns.com can differs, a few years ago a friend had <something>.homeunix.org)

IMHO hosting it online is much better and more secure... If you need to have full root access to the machine(or virtual machine) where the app is hosted you can get a VPS(it's only 10$/month).

rolf

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

Hosting online is really cheap so why bother but, depending on your ISP, it may be possible.
One problem is the upload speed is normally a bit crappy since in Lebanon that's what really costs so they usually will limit it to only what you need for normal, client-style usage of the internet, which is really not much when you try to host stuff.

hussam

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

Hi geeks
I am building a webapp that will be used by about 100 users only, but i need them to be able to access it anywhere. and i want to host it at home on an ubuntu desktop i don't want it to be hosted online.
so can i do it without a Real ip ?
i mean using dyndns or something similar.
i already bought the domain name i just need a way to make my desktop accessible to the users via internet.
thank you for helping :)

You only need a real IP if you are going to host it online since the external world cannot resolve your domain unless it is mapped to a real IP address.
What do you mean by 'anywhere' though? Unless those 100 people are all on your network, you will need a real IP address.

Edit: dydns requires that your server or the external router be broadcasting a real IP address to work.

Last edited by hussam (November 28 2015)

MAD

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

thanks for the help i will try what  scorz said and i will post the feedback here

@hussam it can be done with dyndns but it will have a url that contain @dyndns.org or something like that, what i want is to put my URL

anyway ill try it.

rolf

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

Remember, when you are hosting, your upload speed is the maximum download speed available to all clients.
Which means that, for example, if two clients are connecting to your server at the same time their maximum download speed will be your maximum upload divided by two.

hussam

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

@hussam it can be done with dyndns but it will have a url that contain @dyndns.org or something like that, what i want is to put my URL

You will still need to forward traffic between a port on real IP (external IP) to a port on your server.
According to https://help.dyn.com/remote-access/getting-started/:

Until you have a public IP address, you won’t be able to get anything else working.

Otherwise your server can only read requests from local network/intranet.

But if this is a local intranet thing, then you don't need dydns. you just need the clients to read the custom domain name.

Also if this is a Linux server, make sure you read up on iptables.

Last edited by hussam (November 28 2015)

Aly

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

thanks for the help i will try what  scorz said and i will post the feedback here

@hussam it can be done with dyndns but it will have a url that contain @dyndns.org or something like that, what i want is to put my URL

anyway ill try it.

If you dont have a Public real IP (regardless of being static or dynamic) you wont be able to achieve what you want.
If your ISP is IDM for example it is not possible, they NAT their residential customers, dyndns wont help in this case.

rolf

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

So basically if you want to host on your computer because it's more fun or you would enjoy the experience, go for it.
If it's to run a proper app but you want to spare $20 dollars / month, better forget it.

Last edited by rolf (November 29 2015)

Ra8

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

You may want to try https://ngrok.com/. It allows you to expose a local server behind a NAT or firewall to the internet. And then you can change your domain name DNS record to point to the tunnel created.

I never tried it with this situation, but it does a good job tunneling your localhost to the internet.

MAD

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

So basically if you want to host on your computer because it's more fun or you would enjoy the experience, go for it.
If it's to run a proper app but you want to spare $20 dollars / month, better forget it.

it is for experience and fun

MAD

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

thanks for the help i will try what  scorz said and i will post the feedback here

@hussam it can be done with dyndns but it will have a url that contain @dyndns.org or something like that, what i want is to put my URL

anyway ill try it.

If you dont have a Public real IP (regardless of being static or dynamic) you wont be able to achieve what you want.
If your ISP is IDM for example it is not possible, they NAT their residential customers, dyndns wont help in this case.

but a friend of mine, using idm connection and dyndns, can access his dvr using the internet, he said that every router can be configured to use dyndns, so using the URL provided by dyndns, let's say test@dyn.com he can access the dvr main screeen and watch the cameras of the house

as far as i know about dyndns is that they link your public ip with the URL and continuously recheck if the public ip has changed, and when it does they update it.

how it works with nating i have no idea. what my friend did is that he went to the dydns page on his router and put the URL that he got from dyndns and specified the ip of the DVR,
so i thought that i can do the same but instead of the DVR i specify the ip of the desktop.

Georges00

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

Some routers allow using dydns or noip in their settings. (Their gateway)

Last edited by Georges00 (November 29 2015)

user

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

I have done it before with noip.com for a site that only I will use (it was a git server) And yet it was so bad, I ended up getting a server.

You have to consider that every time your router restarts for any reason(electricity cut, or just a random restart) You and your 100 users would have to wait for anywhere between 10 to 40 minutes for the dns to find your ip again(and sometiems it got stuck and just didn't refresh). Also, ogero blocks port 80, so you would have to redirect them to another port (which was fine for me when it was for my own personal use)

You don't need 20$ a month to run a server, you can get one from ramnode for 3.5$ a month or digital ocean for 5$ (or arrubacloud for 1$ a month, though I don't know much about them) and if it is as low traffic as you say, 256-512 MB ram should be plenty

Last edited by user (November 30 2015)

hussam

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

but a friend of mine, using idm connection and dyndns, can access his dvr using the internet, he said that every router can be configured to use dyndns, so using the URL provided by dyndns, let's say test@dyn.com he can access the dvr main screeen and watch the cameras of the house

Perhaps your friend's router has a real IP address? You can forward requests coming to the router to your server.

MAD

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

@user thanks for the info (y)

@hussam nop he called IDM and told them that he wants to use dyndns and i don't know what they did it and it worked for sometime

but he is having trouble as USER said so basically i am going to host it online

Last edited by MAD (December 2 2015)

hussam

Member

Re: Home Hosting Server

@user thanks for the info (y)

@hussam nop he called IDM and told them that he wants to use dyndns and i don't know what they did it and it worked for sometime

but he is having trouble as USER said so basically i am going to host it online

I think IDM can assign his dyndns address (something.dyndns.com) to their external IP and route the traffic to his internal IP.

Last edited by hussam (December 3 2015)