How can I access a local SVN Server remotely?

Question

I have seen a couple of similar questions to this so I apologise in advance if this annoys anyone, however I felt it was necessary to write the question myself to highlight a few points I am struggling with.

I have a VisualSVN server running on a Windows Vista desktop at home connected to a router and I would like to access it from outside of my local network. I have looked at the following stackoverflow question and answers: how to access subversion server remotely

The top answer gives some suggestions as to what is required but it is not clear enough for me, I have a limited knowledge of these topics and my research into each of them has still left me at dead ends. In reference to the bullet points in the top answer:

1. I attempted to get the public ip of the server but I believe the ip generated by sites such as "whatismyipaddress.com" is for the router, not the desktop.
2. I have done some reading on name resolution but I cannot understand it enough for this situation.
3. I have forwarded port 443/TCP on the router to the desktop. Is that enough?

Please help if you can. Thanks.

Answer 1

1. You are correct, what's being reported to you is your external IP. You need this to connect to your router from outside which will then forward your request to your desktop.
2. Name resolution is only required if you want to use a hostname instead of an IP address to connect to your repository.
3. No. It would be better to configure a non-reserved port (anything higher than 1024) and forward requests to that port to your internal server's correct IP & port number. Hijacking a reserved/well-known port number will cause you headaches. Common/popular higher ports for "alternative" HTTP traffic include 8000, 8080 and 8888. You'll then connect to http://YOUR_EXTERNAL_IP:8000/ (or whatever port you choose).

Note that "how do I do those things?" is beyond the scope of Stack Overflow; those questions are better posed on http://SuperUser.com or https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/. How to forward ports on your router is not answerable without indicating what router you use, as different routers have different interfaces.

Be aware that you're now exposing your desktop to traffic from the public internet. VisualSVN Server runs Apache under the hood and while I'm sure the vendor takes every precaution to address known vulnerabilities in that software and their default configuration, you are now at an elevated level of risk. I would recommend that you isolate this computer from the rest of your personal/private data if at all possible to minimize your risk.