Mac OS X Server w/ Dynamic IP Address?

Sure you can do that. Browse these lists, and especially seek out mrhoffman's excellent documentation and you will be up in no time.

Even though you don't own a static ip address, you will set up your server to operate with a fixed ip address, which will be defined internally. ...the internet won't see it, so there won't be a conflict.

If the sentence above doesn't make sense, peruse the lists and documentation even MORE carefully until...the above sentence is no longer confusing.

There are several answers to this question: But yes is the overall response.

1) A server with a dynamic IP address is NEVER a good idea. The headaches you will encounter as a result of this will not be worth the effort to make this work. An experienced SA could make this work, but if you're asking this question: You definitely don't have the experience or subject matter knowledge to make it work from the git go.

2) You actually do have a static IP. You have a buttload of them actually.

Since you stated you have an Airport Express (or most routers for that matter) you have the ability to setup static IP addresses in the private IP space (192.168, 172.16 and the 10.0. addressing) in the setup of the Airport Express under Internet, DHCP, DHCP Reservations. Enter an IP address that you will use on the Mac Mini Server during the setup. For example, if your DHCP addressing is, say 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.50, enter 192.168.1.1 in the DHCP reservation section and then enter the MAC address of the server. Once a static assignment has been made, you either let the server get it's IP form the AE using DHCP and it will get the static IP based on its MAC address, or just assign the IP in the Network Setup util in the Mac Mini (the latter being the easiest and less problematic.)

(There's MAC addressing, port forwarding, and NAT issues involved as well depending on how you set up your Mac Mini Server, but that is well beyond the scope of my simple reply.)

The Airport Express in your scenario can do a lot of the heavy work in your network setup.

Basically, if I am reading your question correctly -

Your AE sits between your internet connection and your MacBook Pros. Your AE is assigned a dynamic IP from your ISP. Then as your MacBook Pros connect to the AE, it in itself is handing out dynamic private IPs for the MBP's to use to connect to the internet.

All that is needed, is the static assignment of the server and point the MBPs to that server address and wahlah you have your file storage, access, serving, etc.

Hope this helps,

Scott

Start here:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1436

But to connect from the Internet remotely do you not need a static public WAN IP address to get to the DSL modem

But to connect from the Internet remotely do you not need a static public WAN IP address to get to the DSL modem

You can connect to any IP address on the Internet, dynamic or static.

That's exactly what the botnets do; they scan through IPv4 address blocks looking through hosts.

Where things get interesting is knowing what that IP address is, particularly if the address is dynamic.

You can use DNS for that translation, either static IP and traditional DNS or dynamic DNS and a dynamic IP.

The complexity is that the server box wants a static IP, which means you'll need a firewall with NAT capabilities and a private static IP within the network perimeter, or a public static IP. (And that also means port-forwarding, or VPN end-point capabilities within the firewall.)

My IT guy says for us to connect remotely to our server we need a static public WAN address.I have my dsl modem (qwest) set as a bridge, them my airport does the routing to my LAN . I set the airport to reserve a DHCP reservation so the server has a private static ip. But we can not connect remotely to the server. Our it guy says we need a static public wan ip (the qwest modem gets a dynamic ip )

Your IT support staff appears unfamiliar with basic IP networking and with commonplace IP networking mechanisms such as dynamic DNS, or there are constraints or requirements that are not yet in evidence here.

Your Airport is a very weak firewall; it's good for home use, but not particularly suited for servers. I tend to recommend selecting a firewall device with VPN capabilities, as well as with port-mapping capabilities.

Various commercial and open-source firewalls feature an automatic tie-in with various dynamic DNS providers. With this capability, the firewall receives the DHCP from the ISP (as does any firewall that can receive its address via DHCP), and the firewall then passes the (new) IP address along to the dynamic DNS provider.