Why Can’t I View My Website From My Office?

Ever have you website show up to everyone on the Internet but not in your own office?

There are most likely 2 possible problems that can cause this to happen:

One possible cause is that the server is blocking the IP address at your location.  Sometimes this happens if someone from your location tries to login to the server (or email server to send mail) with the incorrect username/password too often within a short period of time.  This creates a block against your IP address and you can’t see your own website or send out email.  This can easily be fixed by going to a website called http://tracemyip.org.  From there you can find out the IP address at your location and then contact your web hosting provider and request that they unblock you.

The other most likely cause of the problem is that the internal local domain is named the same thing as the external Internet domain. This is due to the way your internal network is setup.

How to Fix The Problem

An internal network is normally set up by a company’s IT department/provider, often in conjunction with setting up an exchange email server. These instructions should be passed on to the  IT department/provider. All too often, they get the internal network working fine but fail to give access to company’s external website.

1. Install IIS on EACH domain controller. This must be done on each Domain Controller.
2. (In DNS) Create a www record under your domain.com.
3. Give it the private, internal IP of the webserver, or if the webserver is external, give it the public IP address of the webserver. If you don’t know the external IP, see nslookup to find it.
4. In the IIS console, default website properties, create a redirect, and redirect it to http://www.domain.com.
5. This way when any one of your users type in http//domain.com, it will resolve to the www record you created in Step 2.

Sometimes people prefer to NOT configure their network this way so that when you DO NOT enter the WWW in the domain name, it stays local (or references the internal network) and WITH the WWW, it goes external out to the Internet, but with the configuration steps listed above, you can see your own website with or without the WWW.

If you’re having a problem with the set of your office network or have other questions relating to your domain name or website, feel free to contact us with your computer networking questions. If your IT department/provider can’t fix your issues we may be able to refer you to a IT provider that can.