Re: [PLUG] verizon dsl static external address

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 5:58 PM, Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org> wrote:
> I'm surprised that it changes at all. I've got a dhcp address on my comcast
> business account. It has changed no more than twice in 3 years.

Well, the words "business account" probably have a large bearing on
that.  The more you pay per month, the less an ISP is going to tend to
do to make your life more difficult if you run servers on the address.

I use namecheap for my DNS (free with a registration) and they support
dynamic DNS.  I then use ddclient to update that address.  I picked
namecheap since their rates were cheap, and they had decent DNS
capabilities for free.  They seem to be geared towards domain
speculation/parking but they work well enough for my needs for
production use.

There are other DNS providers that allow for dynamic DNS.  Generally
the more you pay the lower you can make the TTL which may or may not
be important to you depending on how often it changes.  For me the 30
minute TTL isn't a big deal since my IP changes rarely, and I have
backup MX.

>From what I've seen Amazon route 53 has been steadily improving, and
while I don't know if anybody has updated any of the common dynamic
DNS clients for it, they have an API which almost certainly should
support dynamic DNS.  They don't care what you set the TTL to but you
pay by the request.  For a home/vanity site they're probably fairly
cost-competitive but if you're going to be running a big site paying
by the request could add up.

Oh, and while there are lots of dynamic DNS clients out there I find
ddclient to be the most powerful.  It supports a huge number of DNS
providers, and also a large number of IP-determination methods.  The
simplest is that they'll just poll a what-is-my-IP service at a
user-defined frequency and look for changes.  It can also connect to
many router status pages and detect IP changes, which you can of
course poll more quickly without ticking anybody off.  It can also
periodically re-send the same IP to your DNS provider if they have
some kind of keepalive timeout on your account.  Overall it is a
fairly robust tool and I rarely have to touch it.

Rich
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