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I'm running a Filemaker Pro application on my Mac mini. Filemaker uses Web Direct to generate a web UI for me - I don't have to do anything about that, and I don't even know how I should do that myself. Just saying this to make clear that I can not and will not use another machine to serve as webserver. Just don't have the know-how for that. MacOS uses Apache as webserver - but I guess everybody here knows that...

There are a couple (about 10) persons who use my application. They (used to) log in via their web browser.

To have this up and running, I acquired a static public IP address from the only ISP we have in the country that sells these... This ISP also provides a router - that they do NOT let their users configure themselves! They will not provide the login needed to configure it. They do not provide any information that every other ISP in the world provides to get an PPPoE connection set up with them; instead they pre-configure that all themselves before they give you the router. And that's what you get. So, to have this router do the necessary IP forwarding... That was a nightmare with several sequels, to say the least. But eventually I was able to configure that myself. Some time later the ISP insisted on giving all of their customers a new router... So, the same nightmare. And last week, that router died. Just stopped working. When I called, they said I should have to purchase a new one. So, that was it: I'm fed up with this ISP.

So, here's what I have now: a KuWfi router with a data-only simcard from ANOTHER provider (who only provides mobile data, alas). This means that, at least, I've got internet. But this provider does not sell public IP addresses. If I use Google to get my IP, it will give me a public address. But when I look in the configuration of this KuWfi router, it shows a private IP address instead. Somewhere on the Internet I read that this means that my provider uses NAT to give my router an IP on THEIR 'private' network. I tried Dynamic DNS, but that will only work with the public IP address of my provider's router - not with the private IP they gave me. They will not do IP forwarding for me; neither will they sell public IP addresses.

How can I get my website up and running again???

Somebody said that I could use SD-WAN. But everything I can read about that tells me that it's for enterprises - and I have just a tiny application that I need to share with a dozen of users!

Any help will be very much appreciated, since my application has not been reachable for my users for more than a week now...

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  • May I ask if you find something on this board when searching for setting up a web service behind NAT / CG-NAT?
    – jvda
    Commented May 10, 2021 at 23:05
  • You might get better responses if you drastically cut simplify your question, sticking to just the relevant facts and goals.
    – davidgo
    Commented May 11, 2021 at 0:41

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As you are not going to move the hosting offsite, The solution would have to involve a tunnel or VPN.

You can purchase a VPN with a static IP from any number of players (just google VPN static IP") and connect it from your web server. This is likely the most straight forward solution. There are some downsides like slower responses and cost, but that would appear domewhat unavoidable.

I do note you could likely achieve something similar with an ssh tunnel and reverse proxy but this is more complex and the benefits are marginal. Its also likely to be simolarly priced.

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  • Thank you very much! I looked into this and this seems to be the way to go for me. Maybe just one question: There are VPN's out there that are more affordable for me, but don't have static IP. Could I use one of those and apply Dynamic DNS to it?
    – Stef Vorstenbosch
    Commented May 12, 2021 at 11:31
  • That would depend on the provider - while it is definitely theoretically possible this will work in some cases, it won't work in all cases, and I would posit that it won't work in most cases - For Dynamic DNS mechanisms to work the final "real world" IP address would need to terminate on your equipment. I would expect that most of the time - at least for IPV4 non-static connections - the VPN provider would do some kind of NAT - this has the dual benefit of saving IP space and providing greater anonymity to users of the VPN service.
    – davidgo
    Commented May 12, 2021 at 11:43

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