[PLUG] ISP Changes

John Meissen john at meissen.org
Fri Jan 6 23:19:44 UTC 2012


> On Fri, 6 Jan 2012, Rich Shepard wrote:
> 
>    Patrick, the Aracnet DSL Coordinator wrote this when I asked how the
> change would affect my MTA, httpd, sshd, and proftpd:
> 
> "In most cases we expect the long-term assigned IP to work much the same as a
> statically assigned address. As long as the IP does not change, DNS can
> point a domain name to the assigned IP, and access services run behind that.
> 
> "Another solution would be a dynamic DNS service - most firewalls and 
> routers will support solutions that will automatically update the DNS of 
> your domain when/if your WAN IP address changes. DynDNS and No-IP are a 
> couple of the services that I recall immediately."
> 
>    I need to read abou DynDNS and learn what to do and how to do it.
> 
>    The folks at aracnet/S1 have been really solid for all these years. I've
> no objection to staying with them as an ISP if I can learn how to adapt.
> 
> Rich

Given a reasonably short TTL DynDNS works, as long as you only need to deal
with a single domain. Many routers will automatically update a single domain.
If you're running a linux box as your router see dhclient-script and ddclient.
DynDNS.org recently changed their policies. Although they still support free
entries, I can't find it from their main page. And apparently if you don't
update the entry once a month it automatically expires now. :-( DHCP leases
are typically way shorter than that, but you need to make sure the entry
is updated whenever the lease renews, even if the IP address doesn't change.

They've set themselves up as a domain registrar, but it's not clear how their
(otherwise for-pay) DNS services integrate with that.

Another downside to trying to use a dynamic IP address is that some mail servers
(like mine, for instance), will refuse a connection if it can determine that
it's coming from a dynamic address pool.

So far SpiritOne hasn't indicated any intent to make a corresponding change to
their TOS that would forbid running servers.

john-






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