Setting up a server

One of my real weak points in programming is networking, so I admit that I may be a little over my head with this project. Please feel free to tell me if what I'm trying to do doesn't make any sense

What I am trying to do, basically, is run a program on my laptop (Node.JS, probably) that handles requests from a website, does some functions, and serves data back to a client running on the website. (Research tells me this is called an RPC server)

When you listen for requests in Node.JS, you specify a port and optionally an IP Address- localhost, 127.0.0.1, is what all the tutorials I've read have used, but that's not sufficient for what I'm trying to do

I've read that I'll need to set up a static IP Address? But I think those are relative to my LAN, so they'll be like 192.168.0.X. So then what would I specify for the IP for the s开发者_开发技巧erver and the client? (I don't think the port particularly matters). Do I need a DNS?

I hope this makes sense, sorry for so many questions, thank you for your help

You can run a server on your local machine, and you will specify your local IP address for the script, like 192.168.0.x. But for this server to ever receive a connection, your client must connect to your external IP address. It is the IP address that you get from your Internet provider when you connect to Internet. If your external IP is static, i.e. it does not change, then you can use it in your client script. If the external IP changes, you must setup a DNS record that would resolve the name of your computer. DynDNS can be used for that purpose.

If you have a router, it must be setup so that it forwards connections to your laptop where the server runs. And your firewall must be configured to allow connections.