Most Internet service providers do not give you static IP addresses (without paying more for them), which makes hosting your own Server (Games, FTP, Web) a pain in the butt. There is however a means to create a relatively static looking connection by using a the wonderful service provided by DynDNS. They allow you to get a subdomain off one of their many domains that will automatically forward to your dynamic IP address.

You have several options on how you can keep your IP up to date with their service. You can manually update the IP on their website or you can use one of the many clients on their website. This article is geared towards setting up a Linux client, however there are many easy to setup windows clients you can download from them also, we just won't be talking about them within the scope of this article.

The first thing you must do is setup a Free account at DynDNS.org. You are allowed to create up to five free hosts without paying a single cent! If you decide you need more, it's only $9.95/yr for up to twenty!

After you have signed up with their service, you must create a DynamicDNS on their website. Next, go to the clients section and download "ddclient" (by: Paul Burry).

Install the DDClient as per the install instructions included in your download.

Once you have installed the program you should have a configuration file located in your /etc directory. Below is a copy of my ddclient.conf and we will go over it step by step.

Start of /etc/ddclient.conf:

daemon=900 Update your ip address with the server at this time interval.

syslog=no Do you want this update logged to your syslog?

pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid The pid of your ddclient, you don't need to change this.

use=web, web=checkip.dyndns.org/, web-skip='IP Address' This line checks your external IP address against the DynDNS website. If you have a router on your internet connection, to share it to multiple computers, there is probably a good chance that your individual pc's are using 192.168.x.x ip addresses. We need your IP address that the world can see, which is the one your router is actually assigned.

protocol=dyndns2 This is just the protocol setup by DynDns to transfer this data to their server.

server=members.dyndns.org This is the server that you are going to connect to, to update your information.

login=YourUsername Your username you signed up with, on the DynDNS.org website.

password=YourPassword This is your clear text password. I highly suggest that you set this password to something you never use anywhere else.

mx=YourSite.homeip.net This is the name of the Primary site on DynDNS you setup.

server=members.dyndns.org, protocol=dyndns2 YourSite-1.homeip.net YourSite-2.homeip.net YourSite-3.homeip.net

You can send multiple updates all at one time. You can type as many as you like, one per line, and it will update the ip address all at once for your sites.

End of /etc/ddclient.conf

After the configuration file has been updated with your information and saved, you must restart the ddclient. If you setup the software properly according to the install information you should be able to use the following commands:

/etc/init.d/ddclient stop /etc/init.d/ddclient start /etc/init.d/ddclient restart

Happy Hosting!

Ken Dennis http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/