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Thread: Need clarity on a few DNS things

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    Senior Member Pirate Pete's Avatar
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    Need clarity on a few DNS things

    Hi all,

    Over the past few months I have been looking into hosting a basic website at home. I have a simple, isolated webserver running XAMPP, port 80 forwarding on my router and the dynamic IP service from dyndns.com to keep my webserver communicating with one of dyndns.com's free sub/domains (say http://myname.is-a-chef.net).

    I am now trying to make things a bit more professional and have registered a personal domain name.
    I understand that now I need to use DNS to link my new domain name to my home hosted site.

    As far as I can see dyndns.com charges to use its DNS services in this way. However, after a bit of searching around I have found other free services for this, of which I think http://freedns.afraid.org has got the best reviews.

    Before I go ahead with this part of the process I want to ask for general advice...as well as some clarity on these issues:

    Is the reason services such as http://freedns.afraid.org are free because other uses get to make subdomains of my domain name, and is this a problem?

    Will I need to get new dynamic dns software to keep freedns updated with my home dynamic IP changes?

    On top of this, does anyone have any good web resources for learning some of these more technical elements...I've used www.boutell.com resources up to this point and have drawn a blank on getting clear DNS info in this area.

    Thanks alot! Please bear in mind that 3 months ago I was a total newbie to all of this, so I've probably already done something silly....

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    PHP Geek Flash477's Avatar
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    Re: Need clarity on a few DNS things

    Free DNS services are OK, they just don't offer the same kind of perfomance or SLA that the paid for ones do.

    Using DNS with a dynamic IP is tricky as most DNS entries are set to expire after 24hrs, which would lead to downtime. I assume that the current domain you have also keeps track of your current IP address? If that is the case the best thing to do would be to setup your new domain name as an alias using a CNAME entry.

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    Pirate Pete (23-07-2010)

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    Re: Need clarity on a few DNS things

    Pretty much as you described pete - if you use FreeDNS as a free customer to host your own DNS then you make that domain available to any other free users too - whether this is going to be a problem for you depends on you I guess. I host one of my domains there which I use for tinkering, and I paid for a premium membership which prevents the domain being used by other staff.

    Josh (who runs FreeDNS) is a friendly chap who's always been very quick (within reason - it's a one man operation, so don't expect business grade response times but I've always heard back within a day or 2) and happy to help out if you need a little help. I can't really recommend the service highly enough for home tinkerers.

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    Pirate Pete (23-07-2010)

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    Jay
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    Re: Need clarity on a few DNS things

    Quote Originally Posted by Flash477 View Post
    Free DNS services are OK, they just don't offer the same kind of perfomance or SLA that the paid for ones do.

    Using DNS with a dynamic IP is tricky as most DNS entries are set to expire after 24hrs, which would lead to downtime. I assume that the current domain you have also keeps track of your current IP address? If that is the case the best thing to do would be to setup your new domain name as an alias using a CNAME entry.
    This is how I would do it if I had to but its still not really ideal.
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    Pirate Pete (23-07-2010)

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    Senior Member Pirate Pete's Avatar
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    Re: Need clarity on a few DNS things

    hey guys.

    thanks very much for the replies. I got it sorted out using freedns.afraid.org with their dynamic ip software.
    I'm not paying for the premium account, just using the free service, but I'm really happy about how far I've come in three months. (knowing nothing about the internet infrastructure to hosting and connecting up my own .com address!!! wahey!)



    Thanks for the advice all, much help!

    Pete

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    peterb (23-07-2010)

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    The late but legendary peterb - Onward and Upward peterb's Avatar
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    Re: Need clarity on a few DNS things

    And thank you for posting that - it's always good to hear ;good news' stries! :0
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    Re: Need clarity on a few DNS things

    nice work mate, keep it up and you own your own ISP in no time!
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