Question

I am trying to test my asp.net project website for public access, so far I have done:

1. Uploaded to IIS 7 and binded to my localhost (192.168.....) Ok works well.
2. Obtained a free domain from 000webhost.com/
3. I tried to change the binding in IIS to the free domain [e-mail] but apparently it’s showing the webhost default page instead.

Is is possible to remain hosting all web project files in my IIS but use the free domain name so that the public can access?

Answer 1

192.168 is a private ip address. No one on the internet will be able to see you. Your ISP likely provides you with a public IP address that can support certain server tasks but many ISP’s block port 80 so that home users can’t start hosting web servers. That means you may need to host your site on a non-standard port.

So, in order for other people to browse to your domain and have that domain’s services be handled by your local machine, you’ll need to have your domain’s A record (in the DNS settings for the domain) pointing to your public IP address. If your ISP assigns you a dynamic IP address, this will require updating your domain name’s A record each time you are assigned a new public IP address. This can cause a period of “unavailability” as the changes to the DNS records take time to propagate.

There are services such as DynDNS that can make this rather automatic.

Then there is the issue of configuring your router (assuming it’s a NAT based router), which is likely going to need to be configured to forward requests for web services (for port 80 or whatever port you end up using if you need to work around your ISP’s restrictions) so that requests from the internet are forwarded to your machine. Your router likely has “port forwarding” and “dynamic dns” features built in, but it’ll be manufacturer specific.