[acclaim]

Me and my friends have implemented an embedded webserver on our college LAN. Right now it is accessible only from the college network. How can we make it accessible from outside the college? The main college webserver(not the embedded one) is Linux based.
Help will be greatly appreciated

Acclaim

[Person]

I don't know about Linux, but on windows exposing a webpage is as simple as creating an application folder in IIS. It is probably somehow similar on Linux.

[Capricorn]

You could just ask the person who admins the university server to set up a virtual web site for your stuff, but that would require that you move all your web stuff to the university server and run it from there. I'm not sure what you mean by "embedded webserver." Embedded in what? A timex watch? A rock? I'll assume you mean you need to or want to leave the server where it is and have people access it directly from the Internet.

There's a few ways to do this. One would be to put the embedded webserver directly on the Internet. That is, give it a publicly addressable IP address. (e.g., 211.32.55.121) It would then be a peer of the university's web server. You would register that IP address in your university's DNS servers so the outside world could find it by name. The university's web server would be at http://www.myuniversity.edu and yours would be at something like http://ourcoolsite.myuniversity.edu. You could even add a second Ethernet card in that box so that Internet requests come to one card from the firewall and inside requests come to the other Ethernet card. (Easy to do with Linux. Can't say for windows.)

You could also talk with the people who administer your firewall/proxy server and set up a port-forward from Internet requests to http://anothercoolsite.myuniversity.edu to the embedded web server on the internal LAN. You would still register the name with your school's DNS servers, but when the firewall see's an Internet request to the embedded web server, it will forward it to the internal LAN address it is actually at. If your firewall admin has a clue what they are doing. they'll know how to do that. The hard part will likely be getting permission to do it.

[acclaim]

This is to clarify what we mean by an "embedded webserver". It is basically a microcontroller board with an inbuilt ethernet module, with enough memory to host a small website. There is no conventional operating system like Windows or Linux running on it.

[Roshi229]

what's running it then?
you have my attention.

[acclaim]

There is a stripped down version of an OS called XINU, which came as a demo project with the board. The demo project very helpfully implements a TCP/IP stack and has nice api's to use various protocols like http, smtp, icmp, telnet, tftp etc.

[Roshi229]

cool
what type of board is it?
got a link so i can check it out?

[acclaim]

It is a board based on the ez80f91 uc by Zilog, can't remember the exact name for the board. It was available free during a contest by Circuit Cellar last year. U can look up www.zilog.com and search for ez80f91 mini board with built in ethernet controller, but it will probably cost u a neat sum.

[Capricorn]

Okay, given that, I would probably opt for the "request-forwarding" approach. You could create a new name in the school's DNS like http://coolembeddedserver.myuniversity.edu and have your school's router forward all requests to that URL to the intenal LAN IP address of your board. Whatever firewall your university is using will still be protecting your embedded server. (You could also use an alternate HTTP port like http://www.myuniversity.edu:8080, but the former is preferable because while most people open port 80 to traffic, some may not open 8080 (or 8081 or whatever).)