All the web masters, who maintain and develop the websites want to have a home-based web hosting server for testing and development purposes, an old desktop computer, can be easily transformed into a Linux sever. If you install the applications like PHP, MySQl, Apache etc and some other tools, then you can do web hosting by sitting at home with your own server. Of course, it is not the kind of hosting which is provided by the commercial web hosting providers, but it is only for the purpose of installing, developing and testing the web applications. By including some other additional settings, you can also access your personal computer from anywhere, where the Internet access is available. This is extremely convenient, in case you forget some important documents at home.

If you are assuming that you have the router including the LAN (Local Area Network), which is a link between the Internet and your computer, requiring no additional equipment. To enable the network access from the Internet, you need to configure the router to forward the remote web requests to your own web server. 80 is the default web port, but any port can be selected to increase the security.
The first requirement to have remote access is the domain. This is the name of your home-based server on the Internet. There are several web hosting services that offer to update the IP addresses and domains without charging any fee. This is particularly necessary if you do not have a static IP address. Most of the Internet service providers assign the IP addresses dynamically, which changes once in a day or with every new connection. While, knowing the external IP address is vital to access your computers from the Internet, you necessitate having a process through which you can update the domain and the DNS records.

Numerous routers support the dynamic DNS services such as DynDns. If your router does not have any such function, you just need to install simple software on your computer, which will be updating the address, every time it will be changed. You only need to make an account by entering your name and selecting the preferred domain name, which will be used as a sub-domain. This information will either be entered into the router settings or the external software utility for the IP address update.

Now, you can access your router. Every time when you will submit your login id and the preferred domain, it will take to your router. If you are enabled with access to its user interface by using an external port, you will be able to configure it as you are accessing it from your home-based computer. You need to configure the port directions to get to your own server. By applying this technique, you can access your home-based server from anywhere.

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