Page 6 of 7

 

Port forwarding on home router

By default ALL ports on a home router are closed. Meaning no connection can be establish originating from the internet to the webserver (or any other device on the home network).
To access the webserver from the internet, ports 80 (HTTP) needs to be forwarded to the PC running the webserver.

The ports forwarding page layout and wording is different for each router brand and even model.
But in general the data to input is the same.

  • Application Name: Any descriptive name (example: webserver)
  • (External) Port range: (can also be a single port)
    • Start: 80
    • End: 80 
  • (Internal) Port range: (can also be a single port)
    • Start: 80
    • End: 80 
  • Protocol (Service type):  both  (TCP, UDP or both)
  • (internal) IP address:  192.168.100.200  (the IP address of the PC-LAN accessing the webserver)

An illustrated guide with a number of popular router brands can be found here 
To know if the port is forwarded correctly, use a device (mobile phone or tablet) that is connected to the internet using mobile data (not WiFi !!) .

Check if the "Apach2 Ubuntu Default page" or "PHP overview" is downloaded when using the public IP address in a browser like $ http://<public-ip-addr>/  or  $ http://<public-ip-addr>/info.php/

If no page is downloaded or an error is displayed, the portforward setup is incorrect.

To know your public-IP-address, type in the address bar of any browser "what is my ip address".