Zyxel P-663HN-51 Port 80

[Adam Wolf]

I'm trying to set up a web server accessible to the outside internet.

I go into my Zyxel P-663HN-51 router's settings and navigate to "Advanced Settings" > "NAT" > "Virtual Servers".

I click Add. I enter my settings (Select Web Server from the drop down and type in my target internal IP address for the NAT forwarding). I click Save.

I get a pop-up:

"Since port 80 is used, the DSL router WEB server port will be moved to 8080."

So far so good. The router is even smart enough to give this warning telling me that since I want to forward port 80 to a different IP, the router's web server will moved to a different port.

Problem is.. it doesn't move the router's web server to a different port. It stays on port 80. I've tried restarting the router... no luck.

There's still a NAT entry for port 80 listed, going to my target web server but it doesn't seem to be forwarding as expected.

Any help on this?

[Adam Wolf]

I figure it out: I was attempting to test my NAT forwarding using my WAN IP from the internal network, which the router always seems to direct to my router web server. Once I tested on an external connection, all was well.

[virtualmike]

Just a thought... do you want for people external to the network to be able to connect to your router? I turned that off in mine so that no one can alter my settings.

[keith]

How do you turn off external access? I can't find that in the settings.

As for setting up NAT for a web server, I'm not having any luck connecting to my web server via external IP from within my local network (which is necessary since server host/IP is stored in my site's database)

So annoying.

[virtualmike]

The setting has a different name for each manufacturer. Unfortunately, I'm not at my router at the moment, so I can't check its settings. In some cases, it's something like "Disable remote administration."

As far as connecting to your web server from within the network, what if you create a VPN session from the local computer? Any sites you try to access will be "from" Sonic.net's VPN server, instead of your computer.

[keith]

Got this working today but still with the same problem of not being able to connect to the WAN IP from within the LAN.

We tried just about everything.

I found the setting to turn off remote administration. It was a checkbox under one of the management entries like ' request access authentication'

The only thing that did though was offer up a blank screen when you connected to the IP.

I was told these routers are challenging and the only alternative might be to try a new bonded modem.

I'll look into the VPN option to see if that works.