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Is it possible to access a site from the server it's on with the external IP?

I am on windows server 2003 and need to access a site with the external IP from a browser on that server (1) is this possible and (2) now can this be achieved?

UPDATE:

We have two sites setup on a dedicated server one is the main site and one is a service that the main site needs talk to via http requests but we've been given two external IPs. The hosting provider says that to set one up as an internal IP is a security risk (can anyone shed any light on why this is a risk). As this is a server side request and the second service IP is never given out in the front end and you there's no link to the service publicly other than the main site (we know this because we host this kind of site on our own servers).

The problem is that the external IP is NATing to the site. So the request is going out hitting the firewall but needs to looping back to NAT to the site.

Does anyone know why giving us an internal IP would be a risk? Or would this just depend on their infrastructure?

Kyle Brandt
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3 Answers3

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Type in "http://external ip address" in your browser, unless I'm missing something in your question...

This may or may not work depending on your firewall setup.

GregD
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Have you considered just adding an entry to your hosts file that maps the servers name to the local address?

Generally usage of a hosts file is discourage, but this is one case where it may be reasonable if you don't have any other reason to setup split DNS.

Zoredache
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  • We use host files to fix this problem all the time. So long as the internal IP is private you should be able to set www.domain.com to your private IP (IE: 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x) and IIS or your web server will be none the wiser. – Greg Bray Jul 28 '10 at 17:54
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As GregD says, a lot of firewall setups prohibit this sort of thing, a left-field option is to use a proxy site. Proxy sites are frequently used to circumvent security or IT policies in place on corporate computers but in this case it may be exactly what you need.

Unblock.org is such a site, you can access it from the browser on the webserver and then enter the IP in the URL field on the site.

Marko Carter
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