Access New Intranet Website without using ipaddress and port

Question

( note prefix means http: )

I'm setting up a new website on port 8080, on windows 2003 IIS6.

i've setup the physical files in c:\TestNet and given iusr_ access. within IIS console it can see the files in the right pane, so i know it's path is correct.

when viewing prefix//localhost:8080 or prefix//192.168.xxx.yyy I can get to the default(Correct) webpage which is good.

However I don't want users to type in an IPAddress and port(prefix//192.168.xxx.yyy). Instead I want them to type prefix//TestNet.lab and they should be sent to the website.

I have setup a host header using the iis console(TestNet...>properties...> Website(tab)... advance button). The host header is TestNet.Lab, the port is 8080 and the IPaddress is set to Default.

When I type in prefix//TestNet.lab in internet explorer it returns page not found, 404.

I'm not sure what i'm doing wrong. Ideally I want users in our office to access this website. Please Help

Regards

Any ideas, why the browser is returning 404?

Answer 1

Since you are getting a 404, you are correctly connecting to the server, just to the wrong website. You need to include the :8080 in the address, since that is where your site is located. By default, the connection is to port 80, not to port 8080, which is why the port must be specified in the URL.

Answer 2

Try running the web server on port 80.

Answer 3

Is your network DNS server (or local hosts file on the client) configured to resolve testnet.lab to the server IP address? Just setting the host header configuration in IIS is not enough.

Configuring the DNS server to map that domain to an IP address will fix the IP issue but the default port requested by the browser is always 80 for the HTTP protocol. Unless you have a proxy/NAT/something similar to redirect the requests to the custom port appropriately, you cannot get rid of :8080.