Hello Rudi,
I have tried to point my local nginx server to my isp's (verizon) residential ip address (just for testing purposes) but it's been so long since I have done that, and I am having some problems getting that to work. I bet that they have tightened up on their service since many of their (residential) customers try running their sites that way, which is against their policy. In any case, I was unable to get that to work, and I just don't have the funds available for a static ip right now. If someone can get a hold of Mike on this forum who originally had luck getting mod_rewrite working on his server a year or so ago, that would be great, maybe he would be able to figure out my issue.
I can't be far off from getting it working, because I am using his code.
Brian