itools, DNS and NAT hosting problems

hi everyone ...

i am really hoping that someone may be able to help me to solve some ongoing DNS and itools 7.1 setup woes that are driving me crazy ... i have sent this email to both tenon support and this email list ... i hope the length of this email does not deter ... specific questions are prefixed with ( question # ) ... and at the end of this email are my current system settings ...

i am a licensed itools 7.1 user who is trying to serve a single website from behind a ADSL modem router using NAT ... the problem is that from inside my network everything seems to work yet from outside no one can connect to my website ... Terry Allen in australia has been extremely kind in helping to diagnose the problem yet the solution still appears to be out of my reach ...

i am hoping that someone on the list may have solved this problem or that someone from tenon maybe able to explain what is wrong or where to start looking for a solution ...

( question 1 ) ... on the tenon site there is an old webten document ( http://www.tenon.com/support/webten/papers/webten-ip-translation.html ) that talks about this issue yet i can not find any up to date resources ... this article says to ensure that caching is on and to create a second virtual host that consists of just the external IP address and the server path set to "/www.mydomain.com" ... is this or something similar necessary for itools 7.1 too ???

( question 2 ) ... In my TCP/IP settings the only way that i can get my internet connection to work is to select "Using DHCP" from the Configure drop down menu ... when i do this my router has the intenal IP address 192.168.0.1 (its external public facing static IP address is 203.219.157.2) and my server automatically gets the IP address 192.168.0.2 ... is it ok for my server to have an address that is from the pool controlled by my router or do i need to set a static local address that is outside the range that may be allocated by the router ??? i have read that this may be necessary ... i can set up static routes in my router and can also set the IP address range that the router uses for allocating DHCP addresses ... yet i seem to lose all internet services if i try to set up a static local IP address outside my routers range by using either "Manual" or "Using DHCP with manual IP address" IP address assignment in the system preferences TCP/IP ...

( question 3 ) ... on the itools archive eric yang from tenon talks about using 127.0.01 as the DNS server in the network system pane as a standalone machine may not have a loopback on the network card ... resulting in timeout errors when a 192.168.xxx.xxx address is used for the DNS server ... what does this mean ??? i feel this is close to my problem as from outside my network i experience timeout errors when trying to access my website ... if i put 127.0.0.1 as the DNS server in the network system pane do i need to change anything in my itools DNS setup ??? and what if any other IP addresses should be listed here ...

when i execute nslookup in the terminal i get the following ...

nslookup broadcaster.reverendgenes.com.au

Server:  broadcaster.reverendgenes.com.au
Address:  203.219.157.2

*** Request to broadcaster.reverendgenes.com.au timed-out

nslookup www.reverendgenes.com.au

Server:  broadcaster.reverendgenes.com.au
Address:  203.219.157.2
Aliases:  www.reverendgenes.com.au

*** Request to www.reverendgenes.com.au timed-out

( question 4 ) ... I have temporarily removed the BIND folder and its contents from /system/Library/StartupItems/ as i was concerned that apples native BIND was getting in the way of itools BIND based on information in the itools email list archive ... is this ok ??? or will this just cause more problems ...

is anyone out there able to shed any light on this problem and save me from requiring further madness medication ... at the moment i feel as though i have bitten off far more than i can chew !!!

thanks very much in advance ... ben ...

ps ... below are my current network/itools settings ...

==========================================================================================

at the moment my 192.168.0.2 local address shows www.reverendgenes.com.au and all seems to work locally as expected .... however externally accessing http://www.reverendgenes.com.au gives a timeout error ...

i have delegated the domain:
reverendgenes.com.au

to the nameserver:
broadcaster.reverendgenes.com.au

i have a netgear adsl modem/router that is 192.168.0.1 on my network .... the computer broadcaster is 192.168.0.2 on my network ... i have the modem/router setup to port forward port 80, 53 and 25 to 192.168.0.2

i have the following setup in itools dns manager

Refresh: 3 hours
Expire: 1 week
Retry: 1 hour
TTL: 1 day
Authorative NS broadcaster: reverendgenes.com.au.

reverendgenes.com.au.   broadcaster             NS
reverendgenes.com.au.   mail                            MX      20
ftp                                     broadcaster             CNAME
www                                     broadcaster             CNAME
localhost                               192.168.0.2             A
broadcaster                     203.219.157.2           A
mail                                    203.219.157.2           A
reverendgenes.com.au.   203.219.157.2           A

in the network panel i have the interface en0 set to 192.168.0.2 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0

and the following firewall rules

00001 allow udp from all to 192.168.0.2 53
00002 allow tcp from all to 192.168.0.2 53
00003 allow tcp from all to 192.168.0.2 80
00004 allow tcp from all to 192.168.0.2 25

in my network system preferences i have the following

Configure: "Using DHCP"

IP Address: 192.168.0.2 Router: 192.168.0.1 DNS Servers: 192.168.0.2 203.12.160.35 (these last two IP addresses are for my ISP's primary and secondary servers) 203.12.160.36


B . E . N . C . A . R . T . E . R .
.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Email: carterb@xxxxxxxxxx

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