Dynamic DNS
Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a way of creating your own DNS records on the fly. This might allow you to have a domain name such as yourdomain.com, and constatly point it to your dialup system. DDNS can be managed through various web interfaces, you can choose the method that's best for you.

Getting Started :
DDNS is avaliable, for a monthy fee, to all Digital Indigo customers who use Digital Indigo's Domain Name Servers. To get started you'll need a key. Your key is assigned to you by Digital Indigo. This will be given to you upon registration of your DDNS Service. Your key is proof of your machines identity, and it is what gives a system permission to update the DNS record for a domain name. You may have multiple domain names with the same key for simplicity. However, if you have not been assigned a key, you cannot use DDNS to update your domain name.

Automated Setup:
Most people will want to change their DNS records automatically. With Unix, Linux, or Mac OS X you can easily do this. The example below sets a job that runs every 30 minutes. This job will update the IP address of somehost.yourdomain.com every 30 minutes. The IP address will be set to that of the computer calling running the script (provided it is not behind a firewall or NAT). This makes it ideal for customers who want to automatically update their hostnames to their current IP address.

To have your machine automatically update IP addresses every 30 minutes, add the following two lines to your crontab file. Be sure to change yourdomain.com to your base domain name, and somehost.yourdomain.com to your full host name. Optionally, a "*" can be specificied in the host field (such as *.yourdomain.com). This will resove ALL subdomains within yourdomain.com to the given IP address.

00,30 * * * * /wget -qO /dev/null \
"http://dns.digitalindigo.net/update.php?domain=yourdomain.com&host=somehost.yourdomain.com&key=yourkey"

Manual Setup:
Some people may wish to just fill in a form to modify their DNS records. While not automated, you can gain a web-based management of your record by going to http://dns.digitalindigo.net.

Additionally, URLs can be pasted directly into a browser. For example, if you type "http://dns.digitalindigo.net/update.php?domain=yourdomain.com&host=somehost.yourdomain.com&key=yourkey" into any web browser, the IP address of that machine (or its firewall or NAT box) will be set to somehost.yourdomain.com.

Questions:
If you have any questions about the setup of workings of the Digital Indigo DDNS, please contact us. This is a brief introduction to our DDNS tool. Additional options are available that were not discussed in this document.

Related Topics & Information None at this time.