How To Be Your Own ISP
If you read my page on internet security, which mostly focuses on dial-up internet conections, then you know your dial-up internet connection is almost on a par with the big boys - AOL, MSN, Mindspring, etc.. The essence is there anyway - once you're dialed up, and on-line, you have an internet address, through which others on the net can find and connect to your computer.
Here, I'll show you how to make your computer available to the internet - securely - whenever you are on-line, and via the same internet address.
To do this, you'll need to be running on your machine, a personal web server, and a little program that maintains an association between your transient ISP assigned IP address, and a permanent domain name of your choosing. It's easy, and it's free - not to mention cool!
But Is It Safe?
If you havn't already, you should read my page on dial-up internet security so you'll know everything, and more needed as a primer to get your own internet service going. The most important sections for this, are the sections, Your Internet Connection, and IP Addresses. As I've mentioned though, being your own ISP is easy, and if you want, you can skip all the preliminary information, and cut straight to the chase - you can always come back to this section later.
Note that if you decide to in fact, be you own ISP, you computer won't be any more or less secure than before you took this step. Your computer is ever only as secure as the programs you are using for your internet communication - to understand this, you should also see Computer Communication Mechanics, and maybe the section immediately following it, The Road To Hanky Panky.
And don't forget to grab your copy of ZoneAlarm, a free personal firewall. It's not a requirement for security relative to what we're going to do, the previous paragraph still holds, but if we're going to be getting into all this web stuff, we may as well be prudent. And yes, I have a section on that too :-).
For our purposes, what you should learn from the information associated with the Computer Communication Mechanics link above (and perhaps from the other, The Road To Hanky Panky) is that as long as we trust the software we are going to use to be an ISP, then we have no security worries. But if worry persists - paranoia relative to the internet is not a bad thing :-) - the 'a section on that too' (ZoneAlarm) link information should have you covered.
So now, let us wrecklessly sally forth - I wanna be, my own ISP!
Serving Web Pages With Your PC
OK, real quick, here it is, without further ado, hold on to your hats, get ready 'cause here it comes, the waiting is over, you've finally arrived, and well, here's what you do:
Download, install, personal web-server, BadBlue
Download, install, dynamic IP address manager, DNS2Go
and that's all there is to it. The preliminary information above serves well to give you background information relative to what these programs do, and the information assures you that it's perfectly safe. Now, lets continue with a bit more information on these programs.
Whew, my head is spinning. I mean, a second ago, I was just some regular Joe off the street, and now I'm somebody. Now, I'm a major player on the world wide web. I'm ready for fame. I'm ready fortune baby. Bring on the cavier!
Well, maybe you'd better consider not letting go of your day job just yet. But this is pretty cool.
The above linked programs will allow you to use your home computer as a web server just like the big ISPs. That's right, look out www.microsoft.com - for all intents and purposes, your web serving ability will be no different from any other dot com on the net, and all of this, through your dial-up connection.
Now I know to a lot of folks none of this is new. But hey, I've been in the tech industry for over 10, and it's been only recently that I've begun to hunker down and check out what all the dot com hoopla is all about. I've discovered some new things. I'll bet there's other folks out there, even seasoned technology professionals, who'd find this stuff interesting.
The above programs will let you serve web pages, and other stuff, from a PC, and take care of resolving your dynamic IP address (which you can read about) so that it's always the same every time you go on-line, and thus make your web services available to surfers.
Big Bad Blue (ain't so big, and that ain't bad)
The first linked program, personal web server BadBlue runs in the background listening for requests for connections to your PC. So when someone with a web browser, browses to your IP address, BadBlue will serve up to them the main web site page you configure it to serve up.
BadBlue is a neat, and tiny program so it runs efficiently, and takes up little of your resources. When you surf to the BadBlue website, and read the information there, you might get the impression that the program is for sharing files between your PC, and other BadBlue users. You'll get that impression when you first run the program too. And it can do this sort of thing. But it's also a web server, and that's what I use it for.
The reason I mention the file sharing thing, is so you don't get the wrong impression when you first run BadBlue. When BadBlue starts, it runs an instance of your default web browser, and loads its main page from the directory into which you installed BadBlue. And this main page acts as an interface to BadBlue's file sharing persona - after all, file sharing, and web page serving are really rather similar. But since I wanted BadBlue for its web serving abilities only, I found the file sharing stuff extraneous though you might want it at some point, and it's default configuration ensures no breach in terms of security.
A Couple Configuration Hints
So I immediately figured out how to point BadBlue to my directory of web pages so that it's default behavior, upon receiving a connection request, was to load the main web page document from my directory of web pages - and hence forth, load further page requests from this directory.
To do this, edit EXT.INI, the BadBlue configuration file, which resides in the directory to which you installed BadBlue. You'll need to add the following:
[services]
docroot=c:\mywebpages
where c:\mywebpages is the directory on your machine where your web pages are located. Now, if you don't have a web page, you can download this simple web page - create a directory for your web pages, into which you can unzip it, and set docroot to the directory you create.
My BadBlue starts automatically, and does not start up my default web browser. That's because I installed BadBlue as a "service," which allows, BadBlue to run relative to different user logins to your computer. This was not my objective, I just wanted a quick way to run the server at start-up, and I didn't want my default browser loaded.
To install BadBlue as a service, first exit BadBlue if it's running, and go
to the DOS command line - Start|Run|command. Once in DOS, switch to the
directory into which BB is installed, and type this command:
badblue -install9xservice
If you are running a Windows version other than 9x, then type, for instance, for NT:
badblue -installntservice
When you reboot your machine, BadBlue will start automatically.
To remove BadBlue as a service, do as above, except replace the word install with, you guessed it, uninstall.
There's more customization stuff you can do. Some stuff requires a registered (pay) version. There are user forums, and help pages on the BB web site. That's where I got the above tips - thought I'd save you the trouble of hunting.
Now that you've got a web server running in the background on your computer, all you need to do is dial-up to your internet account. And you are on-line, ready to service internet connection requests through your personal computer. Errr, that is, assuming anyone can find you.
Sure, there's enough people out there probing ports on every possible internet address in existence to ensure that you will get connections. Someone, some hacker, or cracker will eventually stumble upon your internet address while you are dialed up and on-line. That's OK though. There's nothing more anyone connecting to your computer will get, than what the software listening for connections will give them.
It would be nice if your IP address were a bit more tangible - something more than whatever IP address variance your ISP assigns you when you dial-up; something you could tell your friends about, or dare you be so bold, advertise. And this is the kind of tangibility you can get by using the other above linked program.
Every time you dial-up, your ISP assigns you an IP address, as was mentioned above, and behind other links. The DNS2Go program allows you to associate a permanent named internet address, with what ever address your ISP assigns you. It does this by pushing your ISP assigned internet address to its database (DNS - domain name system) all the while you are on-line. So it doesn't matter if your IP address changes, even if your ISP happens to change your assigned IP address while you are on-line - though this IP address is not likely to change in the course of a single given on-line session.
When you browse to their web site, DNS2Go, you'll read that you have to register with them, and so on. I recommend you download, and install the software first, 'cause it's just as easy to register using the software - probably easier. What you will be registering is your domain, or internet address - the name that will be associated with your ISP dial-up assigned IP address.
You'll be registering with one of their name servers. So instead of registering a name like www.mydomain.com (though you can for a fee register this sort) you will be registering a name like www.mydomain.dynamic-site.net.
The dynamic-site part of the address is what makes possible the association between the mydomain part of the address and your dynamic, ISP assigned IP address. That is, since the DNS2Go program, running in the background on your machine, is always checking your ISP assigned IP address, sending it to the DNS2Go IP address database, and associating it with your domain name, anyone browsing to your site, www.mydomain.dynamic-site.net will be directed to whatever your current IP address is, when you are on-line. Of course, when you are not on-line, anyone attempting to browse to your site will just get an unresolved host error message.
Conclusion
Come on, admit it. That's pretty cool ay? In fact, I mirror this web site at my home computer. So if I'm on-line right now, you could browse to my home machine, assuming you are not here already. See if I'm home (I'm now using dyndns.org). If I am, the link should load this page again, but this time, from my home computer - you can never give too much good content :-).
If the above link worked, here's something else to try. Go to the Network Tools dot com web site - the link is set up to run their DNS look-up tool on my home web address, wecs.dyndns.org. This, by default will do a "trace route" as well.
By reading the various computers names/addresses the trace route goes through, you should be able to trace my location geographically - the computer names will probably have city names in them. The trace should end up in Richmond, VA. The reverse IP address look-up (IP address alias) should show that I'm connected via Mindspring dot com dial-up service.
Err, second thought, if I'm practicing safe internet, and running ZoneAlarm, the query won't in fact be able to trace my home IP address all the way back to my home home computer, but it'll get close - the last few computer names in the trace route - before the traces start timing out because of my firewall blocking my computer's response to the trace route pings - will most likely start revealing I'm on Mindspring, and in Richmond. But, if ZoneAlarm is not in "stealth mode", my PC will respond to pings, and the trace route should not time out at any point.
And that's how you be, your own ISP :-). But this is just a training ground. Next, you get some investers, buy some really fast computers, internet lines, a media compaign..
Copyright (C) 2002, Bryan Hoover, Warren Excellence Computing Systems