[Hosting] Intranet available Externally

[karldenton]

OK complete newbie to external hosting here.

We have setup an intranet in school http://servernameort

We now have a public ip and staff can vpn in from home. I would like to make the intranet avaliable from home. We don't have isa - but do have a domain name we can use. It it simple enough just to get the domain hosting company to point the dns records to our server?

Any help appreciated.

[Nixphoe]

Depends how you want to set it up. Do you want other outside users access to it? if not the vpn should do the trick. Have them connect to it then have them pull up the web site. If not and it's a windows machine you could setup IIS. You would need to setup your firewall to point any traffic from the outside port number, if you want it more secure, or port 80, to go to that server.

[karldenton]

Thanks. They could connect to the VPN first then go to the same address as they do in school for the intranet, i'm thinking.

Instead of them mapping a drive, they then should be able to click a link to the shared folders rather then mapping a drive.

[rh91uk]

That realistically would work (the VPN way); or you can get your ISP to open port 80 and then add an A host record to your domain.

[karldenton]

So to point our existing domain name to the address, which dns settings would we give them as surely we only have internal ones.

[Nixphoe]

If I'm understanding you right. You would need to purchase a domain name from godaddy or some other domain registrar (not your internal domain). From there you can create an A record on their DNS servers to point that domain to your external IP address. From there your firewall would direct the traffic to your web server.

[karldenton]

Thanks. The problem we have is that the external IP is on the router and not the server. But like you say, the router should be able to direct the traffic to the web server.

At the moment users are connecting, then mapping a drive to the server. How would the router know if users are accessing the intranet.

[topazg]

What are the users connecting to? To Map to the server that is. Presumably if they are coming in via VPN it's to a VPN host routed by the router anyway?

[karldenton]

The users connect via vpn to the router, which has external and internet IP. They can then map a network drive to the server.

[topazg]

The users connect via vpn to the router, which has external and internet IP. They can then map a network drive to the server.

Ah ok... Presumably the network drive mapping is needed for some other reason than just viewing the intranet? Do users connecting to the router see the server as the DNS record holder for the domain? If so, http://{hostname} of the server should give the intranet page? Or is the network map for editing and transferring of files as well? The (presumably IIS?) server will then track that users are accessing the intranet from the router, as it will register the internal IP of the machine connecting.