Setting up a Home server

Setting up a home server out of your desktop given a static ip is a relatively easy task. Whats normally tougher is to do it without such a facility from your ISP. My ISP, BSNL does not give me a static IP on the plan which I have taken, which is Home UL Plus.

I still wanted to tinker around to get an external face to my new proud acquisition - a desktop. My colleague, Arup, did point me to dyndns.com, which provides a facility to wire together your dynamic ip to a static domain free of cost. Well, if you are lucky enough, it should work.

For me, unfortunately, I also have a Netgear WGR614v7 Wireless router installed at my home which connects to the Modem. Firstly, the modem, UT Starcom UT 300 R2U is hardly the kind of modem which allows for port forwarding. It does have av Virtual Server section, but I couldn't get it to work. More so, I was not sure how modem+router will behave.

Just when I had spent almost the whole evening to get it to work, I hit upon this page, which hit the bulls eye - to use the modem in bridge mode and let your router acquire the IP address. Not just did this work, but my Netgear router also has automatic integration with DynDns. So, updating the IP to the DynDNS server also became a non starter for me.

The final output is http://iyer.homelinux.net which is my new face to the internet. I don't have current plans on how to use this, but I am guessing some interesting things will come up.....

ps: I realize that even with my 600 VA UPS, I can't keep the server up and running in the face of constant threats from the power guys....