Can't Connect to My Website

Factual Questions
1

I created a little private mediawiki page on my desktop last night (for various reasons). I decided to use an XAMP server. On my laptop, I tested it from the (free) domain name I registered through no-ip, running the client for dynamic IPs. It worked fine from my local network, even when I used the web address or external IP.

However, I’m not sure what could be wrong outside my local network. I forwarded ports 3306 (mySQL) and 80 to my static local ip, as well as setting exceptions for those ports up in Windows Firewall. Yet, trying to connect either by domain name or by IP directly causes a timeout. Ping reveals this:

PING <My IP Address or Domain Name>: 56 data bytes
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5

Using various websites, I’ve determined that no external connection can get through without timeouts. Is there anything simple to look for that I might have missed? I assume some permissions or forwarding are screwy somewhere, but I don’t work with websites or networking very often, so I’m a bit of a newbie in the web department and don’t know what to look for.

Edit:

If I run a traceroute, I get through a bunch of hops to about 70.169.76.137, but not to my IP which is 70.176.<omitted> in case that helps web gurus determine at what level the connection is dropping (router, ISP, whatever).

2

What OS is the server? I’m kind of confused; the X in XAMP stands for “Linux”, but you also mention Windows Firewall.

I think most OSes in the last 10 years or so will drop ping packets, so “ping” isn’t really an effective way to test connectivity anymore, sadly.

3

That would be the L in LAMP. XAMPPis a packaged Apache/MySQL/PHP/Perl offering for a variety of platforms.

4

Yeam, XAMPP sorry, I’m on Windows 7.

5

Could be your ISP is blocking the port (some of them don’t like you running web servers on a normal home internet package).

But it sounds more likely that it’s something bit of misconfiguration on the router, or something not working properly on the no-ip side.

Have you tried manually finding out your assigned dynamic IP address (use one of those ‘what’s my IP’ sites), then see if you can contact your server from the outside world using the raw IP address (the lIP address lease ought to last long enough to make this possible). That will eliminate or confirm whether it’s the no-ip setup that’s amiss.

6

Does your broadband plan explicitly allow you to run servers? Many providers will block incoming requests to port 80 and the like.

7

Yup, my ISP was blocking port 80, thanks guys.

I used a port 80 redirect. Now my problem is that apparently I forgot to actually put the server in live mode so it says it’s offline, sigh.

8

Oop, thanks. I got the two confused somehow I guess.

This forum needs a giant banner that reads, “POSTING A TECH QUESTION? MENTION WHAT OS YOU’RE RUNNING! it’s kind of important guys”

9

I figured “Windows Firewall” implied “Windows.”

10

Some versions of Windows block ICMP, some do not. “Windows” alone just isn’t enough info. Especially when we’re dealing with a server situation, and we don’t even know if a Server or Home version is being used…

I’ve worked in Tech long enough to know “never assume-- anything.”

11

Just for future reference, I had a similar situation, and what I had to do was explicitly forward incoming ports on the main broadband router to the (local) static IP I assigned to my server.

Once I did that, everything was happy remotely.