Hi All. My current network setup is as follows:
I have server with two network cards. One card is having external IP & another one is having LAN IP. There are around 20 websites running in my network which are being accessed from outside i.e. Internet. What now I am doing is using port forwarding to access a website on a server on LAN. Any request from outside is being forwarded to internal designated server using a mapping through LAN IP & port numbers on the externally visible server.
My problems are:
1. Is there any other way of accessing my 20 websites on different web servers from Internet using only a single external visible IP address. Other than port forwarding. I don’t have so much money to buy 20 new domains.
2. If there is no solution to first problem, then is it possible that when a user access my 20 websites from outside, he/she is not shown any port numbers. I want to say that he/she should not be aware that port forwarding is being used on my network. Another reason for having this because on many outside networks port forwarding is blocked & users on that network can’t access my websites.
3. Is it possible that since I have a top level domain for eg. abc.edu with external visible IP (the server which is doing port forwarding) I can create sub domains like x.abc.edu, b.abc.edu for all other 20 webservers. What is the procedure to have these subdomains can be accessed from outside. Please remember that I only have a single external visible IP address as of now for my top level domain. I can only buy one more.
My network is on Windows 2000 & windows 2003 servers. Any linux based solution is also acceptable. Please reply soon. Thanks in advance.