Running a building-only webserver

Is it possible to run a web server behind the
firewall so only people in the building would
be able to access it ?

The idea would be to have a intranet site that
would have digital ward bulletins, handouts for
classes being taught, and videos that could be
streamed locally.

Will it work with the new firewall rule being put in place
that mandates using church-only DNS servers, or would some
sort of forwarding DNS server be able to used ?

Finally, if a forwarding DNS server was used,
could you re-direct normally unfiltered websites
like espn.com to a local website that would
say something like "Sports on Sunday ? tsk tsk" ?

A webserver would be possible, but the problem is name resolution. Particularly since some meetinghouses have two or more IP pools. The devices on one pool don't get the broadcasts from the other.

My question about such a system would be this: Would this be difficult for the average member to use? We're accustomed to just connecting our devices to LDSAccess and that's it. We connect to free Wi-Fi at any number of stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc. and it's simple. If what you're proposing requires users to go too deep into their devices' settings then I think most users would skip it.

mrrad wrote:My question about such a system would be this: Would this be difficult for the average member to use?

The server itself would act like a website. You'd just have to connect to the wifi and enter the webserver's address. But that address is the sticky part. You might have to enter the IP address. That's not going to go over well.

russellhltn wrote:But that address is the sticky part. You might have to enter the IP address. That's not going to go over well.

Or write it into hosts file. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

There's a group working on the feasibility of installing a network-attached storage (NAS) device to the LAN in meetinghouses. This would not be a webserver per se, but it very well could store "digital ward bulletins, handouts for classes being taught, and videos". The initial effort is to store the youth curriculum multimedia files and try to make them easily accessible for local streaming, but there's no reason it couldn't be used for much more, given the relatively low cost of hard drive space.

Let me be clear, this is only being studied.

marianomarini wrote:

russellhltn wrote:But that address is the sticky part. You might have to enter the IP address. That's not going to go over well.

Or write it into hosts file. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file

Are you volunteering to enter that in all the member's devices for them?

Because I doubt if most of them could do it.

russellhltn wrote:Are you volunteering to enter that in all the member's devices for them?
Because I doubt if most of them could do it.

I've no problem at all, but I think that this will be a great "activity" for youth!
And this will be when local server will be in use in my unit.

I'm considering the following in my Church Building.

Utilizing LCD TV's with Roku devices and USB drives that would contain media downloaded at home ahead of time by the class teacher. This solution bypasses the internet bandwidth issue and any technical issues around general connectivity. The only limitation is it would be limited to the one device (the lcd TV). I do like the idea of a media server, and have considered something like a Synology drive, which can stream media to users and host websites.

I'm interested if anyone has anything they are currently using that is successful for delivering content? I wonder in a ward of 200+ what percent would utilize it? If half would, It would take a stronger device then was I was originally considering.

Sure would be good to hear from the Church, they are currently testing a solution for this... if you are going to buy any devices I'd go for the WesternDigital vs the Roku, but the Church even has some STB they might be branding for the future. First half of this year should be the initial test.

I'd wait... I realize that is just a sucky option, but two years late is better than nothing.

We've actually successfully set up a Plex media server and installed Rokus on all of our TVs in our Stake Center. I've put all of the seminary and institute videos on the media server and we are in the process of scheduling training for seminary and sunday school instructors.

We went with our own media server (not an out-of-the-box server) because Plex allows for streaming video transcription so multiple devices can connect to it, not just the Rokus. That streaming transcription takes more processing power than a pre-built box would give, especially when streaming 20 videos at once. That being said, we are using an i5 processor, 16GB ram and 2x500G hard drives. It's a very simple and fairly cheap configuration, but it is more than sufficient for the 600+ people that could be in the church at any given time. Technically we only have ~100 people connected to the network and only 1 or 2 Rokus running at the same time, so we've been able to handle the load pretty successfully.

The biggest challenge was dealing with the network and the regular changes that come from CHQ every month or so. Rokus don't do well at finding Plex servers without setting it up in the config and then making sure both the Rokus and Plex server have static IPs. We've resolved that internally, but it may be tricky when relying solely on the church's Firewall to maintain IPs.

I'd be interested to hear how anyone else has done it or if there is a way to get the Firewall to play nice w/ Plex/Roku config.

As a note, If you're building has multiple IP ranges, make sure you include multiple static IP's on the Plex Server... that'll be fixed once we go to the new system, but until then.

the firewall is tricky, but if you've purchased your own computers, just follow the Port requirements for Plex and you'll get it...

johnshaw wrote:As a note, If you're building has multiple IP ranges, make sure you include multiple static IP's on the Plex Server... that'll be fixed once we go to the new system, but until then.

Frankly, I'd call GSC and ask to go onto the new system now. It would be easier.