Help turning a private server public?

I have a virtual server on my home LAN that I am attempting to turn public, but I’m having trouble with the configuration. My original, private server configuration works just fine but when I make the configuration changes to turn it public, I can’t connect.

[ul][li]Windows Server 2016[/li]
[li]server hostname: wow1[/li]
[li]TrinityCore 3.3.5a[/li]
[li]wow1 Private IP: 192.168.x.y[/li]
[li]Firewall Public IP: 50.251.a.b[/li]
[li]Firewall ports opened: TCP&UDP 3724,8085[/li]
[li]public DNS A record: wow.mydomain.com[/li]
[/ul]
I have:

[ol][li]poked holes in the firewall for UDP and TCP for 3724 and 8085[/li]
[li]registered the A record for my DNS domain wow.mydomain.com for IP 50.251.a.b[/li]
[li]created NAT entries in the firewall forwarding 3724 and 8085 from the public IP (50.251.a.b) to the private host wow1 (192.168.x.y)[/li]
[li]altered the realmlist entry in the auth database, changing the address entry from ‘wow1’ to ‘wow.mydomain.com’[/li]
[li]in my client on a remote, external network network, I edited C:\WoW\Data\enGB\realmlist.wtf changing ‘set realmlist wow1’ to set realmlist wow.mydomain.com’[/li]
[/ol]
I intentionally skipped configuring host files and/or configuring dynamic DNS since I have a registered domain name and static public IP addresses.

Eventually I’d like to have it set up so I can connect internally and externally to wow1, but for now I’d like to simply get the external access working properly. What have I missed?

you NEED to edit the hosts file to can connect internally and externally.

you usually cannot connect from lan to wan on domestic routers and because you need to edit hosts.

I suppose I should have mentioned that my firewall is a Sonicwall NSA4500. It’s not a consumer router but an enterprise-grade firewall appliance.

Nevertheless…

I edited the hosts file and added these lines:

127.0.0.1 wow.mydomain.com
192.168.x.y wow.mydomain.com
50.251.a.b wow.mydomain.com

and then restarted both authserver and worldserver but I still cannot connect to it.

As I suspected, it turned out that the hosts file edits were unnecessary. The real issue was a recursive rule in my firewall not configured correctly. Once I fixed my mistake I’m not able to connect to my server internally and externally.

you cannot add the 3, you need to add your lan ip of server there.