Idea for Group Based DynDNS

[Netopia]

Greetings...

I just had a thought about "sharing" a static IP address.

Suppose this scenario:

On person with a static IP at home and a registered domain name (using free DNS)

A number of other people (family maybe) with DHCP type internet connections.

The person with the static setup subdomains for each member,
(i.e. dad.family.com , mom.family.com, tommy.family.com, jill.family... you get the picture)
and then have each of these domains resolve as virtual domains on his server, but redirect to the relative's dynamic IP address (and port forward to their own server when it gets there).

Here's the part I'm not sure about... is there any easy way to have a DynDSN type setup for an average person? By that I mean that each relative might have to have a program running that announces the current IP to the static IP's server every so often, and some program on the static IP's server to update where a sub.domain gets redirected to.

My thought is that you could have a LOT of people share one domain and one static IP address while actually taking care of their OWN server and using their OWN bandwidth rather than having one person have to do it all.

There are lots of other possibilities for something like this.... is it doable?

Joe

 

[bsobel]

My thought is that you could have a LOT of people share one domain and one static IP address while actually taking care of their OWN server and using their OWN bandwidth rather than having one person have to do it all.

Plenty of dyndns services allow subdomains today and let you create your own mid or top level domain. As for the port forwarding for the 'others', it's not using their 'own' bandwidth as the original connection needs to proxy it all. So you use there's and that main connection gets used by everyone, not sure why you'd want to ever do that.

Bill

 

[Netopia]

Hmmmm... I see your point. Since the apache server would be on the machine with the static IP, it wouldn't matter where the files were... they'd still have to be servered by the static IP machine.

Ok... you say there are plenty of DynDNS services... do you mean commercial or open source stuff. I guess what I'm asking is whether there is software out there that would let me host the DNS for friend and family who have DHCP served IP's, and if so, what software would they use to update with.

Joe

 

[Netopia]

Hmmm..... anyone?

 

[Jexx]

Sounds like a thread I would like to see a solution to. My concern would be the security issues with the changing IP, last thing I'd want is someone spoofing a change in address and gaining access.

 

[Dragonbate]

Maybe I'm missing something here. Why not have them use dyndns themselves with a free account for non static IPs?

 

[Netopia]

I thought that dyndns had a price. Are you saying for an address like myserver.dyndns.org or are you talking about taking a registered domain name? IIRC, if you have a domain it costs something like $50 per year for a DynDSN account.

There are other uses though. For instance... I have several comany owned machines that employee's use in their homes. I use pcAnywhere and/or VNC to get into those machines when I need to do software upgrades or remote support. Usually I have to have them go into their router (which I supply and setup for port forwarding ahead of time) and find out what their router's current public IP address is. Some of these people are.... ummm.... let's just say less than computer savy... and it's a pain to get them to find the IP address, even when they've done it before! Withsomething like this, I could host a DynDNS type service for myself and have things like:

trichards.mycompany.com
msmith.mycompany.com

and so on. When I'd need to remote in, all I'd have to do is plug in the subdomain into the remote control program.

I bet there are other uses too... like the whole idea behind the gotomypc business. If you hosted it yourself, those would be unnecessary as you could provide a way for people to get to their home PC's on DHCP connections without them having to remember to check the IP at all.

Joe