Using DynDNS to setup an Internet host with a dynamic IP address

What is it?

If you are connecting to the Net with a basic, permanent connection, be it through ADSl or cable-modem, your IP address is set dynamically by your ISP, and changes every so often. If you want to set up a server at home that can be reached by remote users through the Internet, you need to use a dynamic DNS server where you will update the IP address of your host every time the IP address is changed.

DynDNS (.org, not .com) offers a free account, and you can create hosts in several domains, eg. myhost.dyndns.org. Clients are available that will check your IP address regularly, and update your A record accordingly.

Clients

NT

DirectUpdate

I tried release 3.5.5, and after 48 hours of use, seems to be working fine.

DeeNEss

Tried release 2.3.22. It seems to have a bug which prevents it from working correctly with multi-homed hosts, ie. the computer has more than one network interface. After a few minutes/hours, DeeNEss assigns a bogus IP address to the host's A record.

vDynDNS

Didn't know what to enter as Server Address, and couldn't find a Support section to help me, so moved on.

Linux

Resources