Apache connection issues (Xampp)

Hardware Hub Networking
1

I hope I'm posting this in the correct place.

Over the week I was at my friends with my desktop. In that time short amount of time, I found out what a Apache server was. I set one up, port forwarded through his router and I was fixing up my own website with PHP and all.

When I came home today, I port forwarded all my stuff through my router and made my domain point to my (home) IP. I could not connect through my domain. So, I even did a clean, fresh install of XAMPP. I still cannot connect via domain name or public IP address. I can connect via localhost and local IP address.

So, why can't I connect through my domain name or my public IP address? The ports I forwarded are 80, 443, and 3306 (all TCP/UDP). I've turned my Apache and MySQL server off and used the pfportchecker program to check if the ports were open and it said they were.

I went into xampp/apache/extra and opened up httpd-xampp.conf and changed the 'new XAMPP security concept' from deny all to allow all (connections that is). Which is weird because I didn't have to do this before at my friends. That partially fixed it. Now devices that are not connected to my router can connect to the website, but anything connect from my router cannot connect. I disabled my firewall in my router control panel and it still didn't connect, so I enabled the firewall again.

So does anybody know the problem?

2

Hey man, I am glad to hear you have taken up some web programming!

As for your issue, I do not think it is a problem with your XAMPP configuration. I rather think it is a problem with your router configuration. Some routers have a hard time looping back on themselves if you try to access their public IP address from behind the router. I am not nearly as much of an expert in networking as I wish I was but I think the router registers that you are accessing the public IP address (as is resolved by your domain address for your website) from behind the router and then refuses to send your packet back behind the router.

What I would do to fix this issue is to just read up a bit in your router model technical manual and check if there are any settings you can change in the  router web interface in order to resolve the issue.

Sorry for the very broad solution that I gave but I hope this at least narrows down the problem.

Cheers,

Sebastian