Putting it all together?

[MrRedHat]

Ok got dsl and an ip number.

router all lined up with ip and can access it from a normal modem connection.

port 80 goes to my web server.

Question is how do i map a name to that ip.

What do I do first?

Go to the registration company and change my name servers to what?

Thanks in advance

[Craig McPherson]

Are you saying you want to host a real Internet domain name on your box?

First, you have to find out: is your IP address 100% absolutely static? If you're very very sure your IP will never change, you can do DNS hosting for your box yourself, although it's rather complicated, and you'll still have to sign up with a free service like Granite Canyon to be your secondary DNS. You can also have Granite Canyon be both your primary AND secondary DNS if you don't want to go to the hassle of learning Bind. They'll just point your domain name at your IP address, and then it's just a matter of listing their nameservers when you register the domain.

If you want a .net, .com, or .org, the best place is Gandi (http://www.gandi.net/), which charges 12 Euros a year (about $10US: even if you have a United States credit card, you can still use it to pay in Euros, and you shouldn't even get charged a conversion fee). There are cheaper registrars, but their service is TERRIBLE. Gandi's site looks very weird at first, and can be confusing to initially learn, but once you figure it out it works awesome.

If you do NOT have a 100% static IP address, you'll probably want to sign up with a dynamic DNS hosting company like DynHost (http://www.dynhost.com/) that lets up update your IP address in their DNS records with a script. There are free services (http://dhs.org/ might have free dynamic DNS now, not sure), but I prefer to shell out the $10 a year to DynHost, plus a one-time fee of $20 to link the domain name to their records, because they have good service.

Let me know where you want to go from here and I can offer more advice.