On 28 Jun 2004 22:55:06 -0700, alban@exemail.com.au (Farfarer) wrote:

>Hello,
> I have recently set up 2 websites using the virtual hosting available
>on apache. I think they are both actively available on the WAN. My
>dilemma is that when i type the name of one of the sites in my
>browsers address bar it opens the admin and password page for my
>routers configuration!!! I think that both sites are working
>"externally". The second website appears when I type in its specific
>www.example.com address from my local computer no router login pops
>up.
>If anyone has any ideas on why this happens please tell me im all
>ears.

I'm can't be sure what your configuration is, but my best guess is
that you've configured port forwarding on a NAT router for port 80 and
then pointed your two hostnames to your external (internet-facing) IP
address. You're then making a request from inside your private network
using those hostnames.

What is most probably happening, then, is that the request is going to
your router because that is the default route for systems on your
private network. The router sees a request on port 80 on its internal
interface and answers that request using its own web server. Despite
the fact that you used the external address, it is recieved on the
internal interface because that's "closer" to you. Technically, the
router should notice that the destination IP address is for the
external interface and "pretend" that is where it was recieved, but
for better or worse it is not.

All I can suggest is that you try to reconfigure your router to offer
its admin interface on a different port so that the router has a
chance to forward the request as you want.

On the bright side, unless your router is grossly misconfigured it
shouldn't be serving its admin interface on the internet-facing
interface so it probably works for everyone else.

The only final quirk is that one of your sites actually works. I can't
begin to guess why that might be happening without more information.

Best regards,
-Claire