I have a Vigor 2820n and have a question about part of its setup.

I have recently set up a Linux box on my home network which runs various servers (apache, IMAP mail etc) which I want to expose to the outside world.

The server has a static IP address on my internal network and I have allocated a FQDN to it and set up DNS records to map that name to one of my allocated IP addesses so it can be accessed from outside my network.

I have also set up port forwarding rules on the Vigor to forward certain services to the appropriate port on the server.

What I want to be able to do is access the server from within my home network using the FQDN. Currently I have hard coded the hosts file on each of my PCs to override the IP address that is configured in the DNS in the outside world.

The problems with this are:
1) I can't set up a hosts file on my Android phone to enable it to access the server when connected to my home network using WiFi (when using 3G/GPRS it can see the server fine)
2) conversely, if I am away from home with my laptop and 3G modem the hosts file would override the DNS entry and I would have to edit that to gain access remotely

I'm sure it's possible to do this - I just don't know how. Can anyone help?

OK, so it seems that the terminology for what I want to do is NAT Loopback. I have searched high and low but cannot find any guidance how to set this up.

Anyone able to help?

One way to do this would be to have your Linux box run DNS on your internal network. The Linux DNS package is called 'bind'.

Your DrayTek can still hand out the DHCP IP addresses, and it gives these devices (eg your Android phone) the IP of the Linux server as the DNS server.

Your Linux server then has a DNS zone file for your FQDN that resolves to the internal addresses for the services you are offering.

Make sense?

I think if you look at the release notes for the latest software they state that loopack is broke!

Howard Simpson wrote: I think if you look at the release notes for the latest software they state that loopack is broke!

Very true - which is one reason why I'm not using it! Currently using firmware version 3.2.1 which is what it shipped with.

Fork wrote: One way to do this would be to have your Linux box run DNS on your internal network. The Linux DNS package is called 'bind'.

Your DrayTek can still hand out the DHCP IP addresses, and it gives these devices (eg your Android phone) the IP of the Linux server as the DNS server.

Your Linux server then has a DNS zone file for your FQDN that resolves to the internal addresses for the services you are offering.

Make sense?

Yes - this makes sense and I'm sure I could get this working. I was just under the impression that configuring NAT loopback on the router would make this unnecessary.