Website hosted at home pingable from outside, but not browseable from outside

Question

I have a simple setup.

1. Server at home has local I.P. 192.168.1.3
2. IIS is running on the server and the website is up.
3. Windows firewall on the server has an exception rule for port 80 TCP
4. Router has static I.P. XX.XXX.XX.XXX
5. Router is forwarding TCP port 80 to 192.168.1.3
6. My domain registrar is my DNS host and is pointing to the static I.P. XX.XXX.XX.XXX of the router

Here's what I can and can't do.

1. I can browse the website from within my home network either by I.P. or domain name.
2. I can ping the domain and the I.P. from outside the network (from a computer at work).
3. I can't browse the website either by domain name or by I.P.

Wierd. Why I can't browse my website?

Answer 1

There's always the chance your ISP is blocking traffic on port 80. You could try it on something like port 8080 to see if the traffic gets through then. Bear in mind that your ISP may be blocking port 80 because it's against the TOS to host a website - in this case, hosting your site on port 8080 might work, but you are at their mercy if it's specifically against their terms of service to do so.

Answer 2

Not sure about IIS myself, but a logical thing to check:

Make sure IIS isn't listening on localhost/127.0.0.1 or an internal IP. Should be listening on either 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces) or your static external IP. (not a networking major here so not 100% sure on routing issues)

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

The router's firewall and other protection software was enabled. Comcast forgot to disable this when they gave me a static I.P.

I called them and they disabled it and put the router into "pass-through" mode, and voila, website is browseable.