tracking my dynamic IP address remotely by e-mail

B

beverson

Registered
I currently have @home cable modem, and a static IP through them. I have a broadband router and inside that three Macs, including my trusty rev. B iMac which is the Web and file server. I bought a domain name to make such things easier, but as of tomorrow Comcast is forcing us to use DHCP for dynamic IP addresses. Dynamic DNS is too expensive, but I'm spoiled by having my own Web/FTP/AFP server at my own domain -- very handy when I'm at work and realize I need a file or three that I left at home.

Now with the router taking care of getting and renewing an IP from DHCP I figure (but don't know for sure yet) that I'll be able to keep the same IP for semi-extended lengths of time. And I can administer my domain name online and change the IP in the domain record as needed; however, this is only really useful when I'm at home and can check my IP from inside my LAN.

So here's what I want to accomplish: I want to somehow get an e-mail from the iMac, look at the headers, determine the new IP, and fix the domain record. I'm not sure of the best approach, nor the best tools. One idea I had is to be able to send an e-mail that would trigger a response from the iMac, maybe by sending to a POP box elsewhere that the iMac checks every X minutes or something. Another would be to have the iMac send out a blank e-mail to me at intervals, though that's less desireable as I don't want to have dozens of blank e-mails from myself every day.

I figure this has got to be possible somehow, but I don't have enough UNIX know-how to know where to begin. Also, I may be thinking about it totally wrong, so perhaps someone else has a better approach sans e-mail. I would prefer to keep the overhead low and do it all terminal-side if possible, though I'm not entirely opposed to using something in Aqua as long as it's fairly unobtrusive since the iMac isn't as peppy as it once was.

I would love to be able to get this to work. But some outside help is definitely required.
 
bev,

I had the same problem.

I have DSL service that assigns dynamic IPs to my machine so that I can't set up DNS service on my machine.

I had a domain but no IP to point it to so I looked into dynamic DNS services and they're really not that expensive or hard to set up.

I went through no-ip.com. I could have used one of their domains for free but decided to pay the low fee of about $25.00US a year to use my own domain.

With them I was able to sign up and create hosts for my domain that my web server could pic up and direct to the right site...
www.mydomain.com
shop.mydomain.com
etc.mydomain.com

All this with one dynamic IP address and under $30 a year.
 
Holy crap! 1.) That's a lot cheaper than any dynamic DNS I'd yet found, and 2.) the client software works through a router with NAT! Again a feature I'd not yet found.

I will be seriously considering this option. Thanks a ton!

(If anyone else would still like to respond to my intial inquiry, I would certainly be interested in hearing how something like this might be set up, and it may be of benefit to someone who can't/doesn't want to run the client software or pay the $30 a year.)
 
I am going to speak in generics... cause I have looked into setting up my own Dynamic DNS server... however, since my dynamic IP changes ummm... well, it hasn't changed once... I really quit looking into it.

But basically... here is what you do...

On Mac OS X or some Linux system... run a CRONTAB say everyone 3 hours or maybe even more or less, depending upon what you want... then have it call the program "Lynx" a command line browser and target it to website and have a small PHP script that reads that IP and shows it when you go visit it, this way you know what the current IP is.

Another way, you could also have it automatically update your DNS and that could be possible...

Another way, as you mentioned, you could setup a RULE under your mail client and everytime it gets a certian subject line that you define, it replies back with a message... then you can get the IP address. Which is probably the simpilest one of all if you client is running all the time.

Admin
 
Or how about for free from dns2go.com ? I have been using it for a while now and it's been great. No problems at all.
 
Yeah, it would appear I didn't research dynamic DNS services nearly as thoroughly as I thought I had. I suppose even more helpful than my original inquiry would be a list of such providers.

If anyone else has used a different service not listed here, please post with your preferred provider.

Thanks, everyone.
 
bev...

Your best bet is to go somewhere like versiontracker.com and look for mac clients for Dynamic DNS there are several listed there.
The one I use for no-ip.com has a *unix version that I compiled for Mac OSX and it works great.

:::Side Note: I used to use DNS2GO. The good thing is it was free the bad thing was you were a host name tacked on to DNS2GO.com (i.e. host.dns2go.com) you have to pay there too to use your own high level domain. It's a good service but had a lot of downtime with them.

DynDNS.com is another organization that does dynamic DNS. Havent' tried them though but pretty sure most of them are reliable, just use whoever you feel has the easiest interface and has a price you're comfortable with.

-B
 
Originally posted by hugheba
bev...

:::Side Note: I used to use DNS2GO. The good thing is it was free the bad thing was you were a host name tacked on to DNS2GO.com (i.e. host.dns2go.com) you have to pay there too to use your own high level domain. It's a good service but had a lot of downtime with them.
-B
Click to expand...

Nope, it's free even to use your own domain name. I do. Only thing is that they have to host it. Good thing I have more than one domain name. :) But when did you use it? I haven't seen any problems at all since I have been using them.
 
It's been a while since I've used it. They may have changed their pricing structure....or I may just have been smoking crack.

Does DNS2Go let you create alias's and hosts now?
ww.mydomain.com
shop.mydomain.com
etc.mydomain.com?

Or do you have to set it up where they point all mydomain.com to your ip and you have to resolve the hosts?

Last time I check this was the situation. Which in that case you have to set up some kind of DNS resolution on your end.
 
Probably not. Not sure. All I really use it for is to get to my home systems easily. Since I have DSL, my up sucks, so it's not worth much more that messing around and giving things to friends.
 
I use www.dyndns.org for my dynamic dns needs. It has client software that will connect to the main server and update your dns whenever necessary. It's free too. Your address would be: (whatever).dyndns.org. Suave eh?
 
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