Every so often forum members keep suggesting for OpenDNS to pull our IP from DynDNS because many routers will automatically update a DynDNS record but not an OpenDNS record. Implementing that particular suggestion is fairly impossible, to put it mildly.
It is, however, possible to do the opposite: Have DynDNS automatically push the new IP to our OpenDNS account.
Now, while it is possible, and rather easy to implement technologically, it would require for OpenDNS to have an incentive to do so, either by charging its members a fee for doing so, or by striking a deal with OpenDNS (to which this may bring more business from new members), or by some other means. I am not going to address the economic issue. I am only going to propose how to implement it technologically and leave it up to OpenDNS whether they want to negotiate it with DynDNS.
The first consideration is that, while some people would be quite happy to give their OpenDNS password to DynDNS, or their DynDNS to OpenDNS, not everyone is willing to do that, nor should anyone be expected to do so. This problem can be easily resolved by OpenDNS giving us the option of having two separate passwords, one for the dynamic IP update and one for everything else (logging in, forum, statistics, configuration, etc). This can be done even with all the existing members who never check in by simply using the old existing password for both until we decide to change one or the other or both.
The second consideration is that many of us have more than one DynDNS domain under the same account, and they are not necessarily all pointing at the same IP. So, it would require DynDNS to update our OpenDNS IP based on an individual DynDNS domain, not by a DynDNS account as a whole.
The rest would be simple (providing, of course, that DynDNS would be willing to do it): We would configure one of our DynDNS domains with our OpenDNS account name and the dynamic update password (but not the main account access password). This would guarantee that a third party could not abuse the system. We would also configure our router to automatically update our DynDNS domain(s). And as soon as DynDNS would receive the update for that one domain, it would let OpenDNS know the new IP. Since it would use the special password, OpenDNS could trust the information and update our record automatically.
Once again, I am just offering the idea of how to accomplish this from the technological standpoint. The economic logistics, I shall leave to others.
42 Comments
It is, however, possible to do the opposite: Have DynDNS automatically push the new IP to our OpenDNS account.
Now, while it is possible, and rather easy to implement technologically, it would require for OpenDNS to have an incentive to do so, either by charging its members a fee for doing so, or by striking a deal with OpenDNS (to which this may bring more business from new members), or by some other means. I am not going to address the economic issue. I am only going to propose how to implement it technologically and leave it up to OpenDNS whether they want to negotiate it with DynDNS.
The first consideration is that, while some people would be quite happy to give their OpenDNS password to DynDNS, or their DynDNS to OpenDNS, not everyone is willing to do that, nor should anyone be expected to do so. This problem can be easily resolved by OpenDNS giving us the option of having two separate passwords, one for the dynamic IP update and one for everything else (logging in, forum, statistics, configuration, etc). This can be done even with all the existing members who never check in by simply using the old existing password for both until we decide to change one or the other or both.
The second consideration is that many of us have more than one DynDNS domain under the same account, and they are not necessarily all pointing at the same IP. So, it would require DynDNS to update our OpenDNS IP based on an individual DynDNS domain, not by a DynDNS account as a whole.
The rest would be simple (providing, of course, that DynDNS would be willing to do it): We would configure one of our DynDNS domains with our OpenDNS account name and the dynamic update password (but not the main account access password). This would guarantee that a third party could not abuse the system. We would also configure our router to automatically update our DynDNS domain(s). And as soon as DynDNS would receive the update for that one domain, it would let OpenDNS know the new IP. Since it would use the special password, OpenDNS could trust the information and update our record automatically.
Once again, I am just offering the idea of how to accomplish this from the technological standpoint. The economic logistics, I shall leave to others.
42 Comments
Who voted for this idea
- Red Prince
- bsapp100
- jamie198402
- mylordchief
- earlofthewest
- aarundel
- rotblitz
- benaroia
- dayron
- jshuma
- jonathanbloom
- techie1
- murre
- smeyer
- sirvisetti
- rainerj11
- akira.pl
- spudstud
- chumbadude
- cdelaney51
- tarren.mac
- thegreenlion
- candlecafe
- Sok Vanthol
- abbadon
- Huy Tran
- kghazi
- jsauter
- jtjbt20xrear
- brittain
- foxtyke
- jeffmccann
- ffamily
- ryonbr
- areil
- hullservers
- frgaustin
- lordmedikit
- yurij
- keshas
- panthrax
- tomdlgns
- sparagi
- kotori
- emirhany
- nwhite4
- dlightfoot
- habib2005
- intlsos
- alphageek
Comments
If you could enter a your DynDNS name instead of an IP for OpenDNS, this would be a non issue.
written by OpenDNS User 518 days ago
Rating: 20
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I'm curious why the above comment from jasontb was voted down?
A cult of ignorance, perhaps?
written by Luiz Fellipe Carneiro 620 days ago
Rating: 4
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OpenDNS is a big DNS server no?
no-ip is also a big dns zone with lots of dynamic ips.
So why not I configure in opendns that my hostname is xyz.no-ip.info and so opendns will check when the A record for xyz.no-ip.info changes. When it changes, change my account network too, can't be done?
written by Red Prince 618 days ago
Rating: 6
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That would require OpenDNS to keep checking a large number of domains from DynDNS every five minutes or so. That would be impolite, to put it mildly.
The proper solution is to strike a deal with DynDNS to inform OpenDNS when your router updates your DynDNS account.
why not use...
https://www.dnsomatic.com/
Which is a another product by the OpenDNS team... updates your DynDNS service and your OpenDNS details.
written by jonathanbloom 619 days ago
Rating: 8
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My router doesn't work with DNS-O-Matic, only works with DynDNS.
written by Red Prince 618 days ago
Rating: 4
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Two reasons:
1. Many routers can update DynDNS as soon as the IP changes. Instant gratification. But most of them cannot update DNS-o-Matic. So, you need a software solution that checks your IP every five minutes or so, polling some web sites, increasing traffic congestion, and you have to keep a computer on 24/7.
2. No one in his right mind is going to give his passwords out to DNS-O-Matic, or any other third party.
For those whose routers don't support dns-o-matic: do your routers have a Custom option? Mine had custom, and just fill the fields like this:
DYNDNS Server: updates.dnsomatic.com
Username: *username*
Password: *password*
Hostname: all.dnsomatic.com
URL: /nic/update?
Now, my opendns and my dyndns.com account are both updated by my router, no PCs need to be on.
Implementing that particular suggestion is fairly impossible, to put it mildly.
How is this impossible? Obviously they can update the IP automatically with software. The DNS server that they are running already has my IP and domain name. So why not just look up my IP address on their own DNS server?
It's not that it's impossible, it's that they don't want to do it! While they may have great DNS servers, the other services they are offering will go unused because they aren't flexible enough in their implementation, and setting up a DNS daemon on a home computer is going to be an undesirable option.
written by Red Prince 605 days ago
Rating: 5
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Sturmey, you are asking them to stand on their head. Yes, they would know your domain name. But you are not making DNS queries from a domain name, you are making it from an IP address. And when your address changes, how are they supposed to know to check *your* domain name to match with your new IP address? They do not *know* that your domain name's information has changed. They will not find that out until next time someone is querying the IP address of your domain through OpenDNS and OpenDNS sees that they had not checked it for at least an hour (or whatever expiration time you have set with DynDNS from your domain).
What you are asking is that they should check every customer's domain name for a match with the IP address of every single query they recieve. That would mean they would have to query the name servers of your domain (e.g., DynDNS server) and of every other customer's domain millions of times every day. That is absurd! And it breaks the rules of how DNS works. So, yes, it is quite impossible!
On the other hand, if they can convince DynDNS to update OpenDNS' record every time a mutual customer's IP address changes, they would only need to do so one time for each address change.
DynDNS is in just about every router. DynDNS updating opendns would be the best shot. I would pay.
Of course this idea would be great!
However, I believe that providing a Dynamic Domain Name does not require that much of OpenDNS as described above. OpenDNS should make it a point to "update" the networks that have provided a domain name, twice a day with it's IP. And no, that's not a lot of queries to do for a DNS server. True, that its possible that the IP has changed and OpenDNS wouldn't know of it until it's next "update", but I think twice a day is fair enough.
Ok, I see why OpenDNS is reluctant to add this idea. This will enable you to add someone else's network to your profile. True that OpenDNS can check the IP while it's being registered, if the register is on that IP, but what happens after that? You can easily go and update the dynamic name to any IP address.
Although I'm not sure why this is an issue (if someone can enlighten me), however I see that OpenDNS takes it very seriously.
written by bevan.coleman 519 days ago
Rating: 0
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Is it possiable for OpenDNS to simply redirect dyndns domain to their own server IP. After all, that is what it's doing when it detects blocked domains!
That would be against DNS rules. It's different when OpenDNS really provides the true answer to people that haven't blocked a particular site, and then "redirects" their users that have blocked that site to their own server. What you want is something that I'm afraid is impossible, as OpenDNS receives it's answers from other DNS servers around the globe (and vise versa). You can't just chage a Domain's IP to a false one just like that.
A) Other requests that refer to DynDNS that OpenDNS doesn't know the answers to, would come up false.
B) You're also populating a false DNS for a domain, which is illegal (and I think impossible).
C)...
I started a very small service to populate DynDNS (or any other free hostname provider) changes to DNS-O-Matic (and OpenDNS through that).
You would have to give your DNS-O-Matic Username and Password away, though.
You can give it a try here: http://dnsalloc.appspot.com/
(Login is done through Google Services)
Any chance for some source code so people could create their own service ( and wouldn't have to give you their password )
Well, opendns doesn't have to update live or every 5 minutes.... Daily may even be fine. It may even have some logic to check hosts of IPs that haven't used opendns recently... so:
every 24h, opendns would go through it's list of accounts with dynamic entiries, if there were no queries from IP then it would lookup the dyndns cname to see if it should update the IP. It might only do this once and then classify the dyndns cname as defunct and not try anymore until the account was accessed and either manually or automatically refreshed.
Every 24h would be better than not at all and would probably serve the vast majority of people.
So if there was no queries from an IP after 24h and there was a dynamic cname source configired for that IP in the user account, opendns would check once to see if the IP should be updated... there is no need to for OpenDNS to keep CONSTANTLY checking a large number of domains and there wouldn't have any appreciable increase in requests or traffic -- any traffic would probably be actually be negligible if this methodology was implemented.
I don't follow as the idea does that this is impossible either. tymes has a simple way to implement it above and it requires NO access to the DynDNS account. You simple do a lookup on the dynamic domain and get the IP.
He even suggests a good way to keep OpenDNS from rechecking all the time. If you check the IP and it hasn't changed and OpenDNS has received no queries from the IP/account in a set time then stop checking the IP for changes.
This stops OpenDNS from having to check IPs/accounts that aren't in use or have a problem with this Dyndns setup. Users could then come back in and turn back on automatic IP updates.
Sounds simple enough to me to implement in OpenDNS's online management system and it doesn't change their DNS servers at all.
my ddclient.conf
It works. Make your own.
daemon=600 # check every 600 seconds
syslog=yes # log update msgs to syslog
mail=root # mail all msgs to root
mail-failure=root # mail failed update msgs to root
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid # record PID in file.
cache=/tmp/ddclient.cache # Cache file
protocol=dyndns2 # Default Protocol
use=if, if=eth0 # No router. Use eth0
server=members.dyndns.org # server
login=$USER # username
password='$PASSWORD' # password (in single quotes)
foobar.homelinux.org # Domain 1
f00b4r.dyndns.org # Domain 2
##
server=updates.opendns.com # Obvious
protocol=dyndns2 # protocol
login=$USER # Obvious
password=$PASSWORD # Obvious
$NETWORK # located in https://www.opendns.com/dashboard/networks/
Isn't a much simpler solution for OpenDNS to allow me to specify a Dynamic DNS hostname in my configuration at OpenDNS?
OpenDNS would use the IP advertised in the DNS "A" record for the dynamic DNS name in my OpenDNS configuration. The overhead for everyone is minimal since OpenDNS receives the information instead of polling other providers for the information. No one needs to have shared authentication information. Routers don't need to be modified to add support for OpenDNS in addition to dyanmic DNS.
OpenDNS would need to allow me to specify the dynamic DNS hostname and build the back end logic to scan the DNS updates for the A records that match their customer's names.
written by John Waller 398 days ago
Rating: 0
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Yes, OpenDNS should allow us to do this.
What about being able to set my network in opendns.com to mydomain.dyndns.org instead of an IP address -- that way opendns could always get the current IP for my dyndns host and consider that my network.
I still horribly confused by this, dyndns or dnsomatic or both or neither? *help* Maybe we should ask the The Department of Redundancy Department about this.
Otherwise, why not have the option of just putting in a dyndns nic or even better, why doesn't OpenDNS do a dyndns type service?
b.
I like the idea to have more of one password o maybe key's, to use in other services and not revelate my opendns password :-), greeting's.
I think people are voting this idea up because they don't read it. It's actually implemented in a much more complex way than I think it needs to be. OpenDNS doesn't have to get the IP out of my DynDNS account. OpenDNS can do a lookup on my domain to get the current IP.
OpenDNS can also implement an algorithm to stop checking if specific things don't happen. Like say, the IP doesn't change for X months and there have been 0 queries from the OpenDNS IP/account. Then the feature could simply be shut off. This algorithm eliminates unnecessary updates.
Besides, one lookup a month or even week isn't going to significantly increase DNS traffic for what maybe 10000 dyndns users of OpenDNS?
I'd imagine that OpenDNS wouldn't even notice 10,000 queries spread over a months time.
written by capro22340 215 days ago
Rating: 0
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I am in need of solution for keeping my OpenDNS IP up-to-date and this post caught my eye. I really need this feature, but how it is implemented is not relevant to me.
I have a router that will automatically update DynDNS. I have two laptops that travel to work with me and my spouse. Software running on the laptops isn't a viable solution because as soon as either of us goes to work the software updates OpenDNS with the wrong IP. Things get messed up unless we remember to turn off the auto-update software... that isn't very "auto" is it?
Possible solutions:
1) The best solution is one that relies on routers rather than pc-software, because the router represents the relevant endpoint. Unfortunately DynDNS has the router-ip-info market cornered, so the best solution will probably have to involve DynDNS, unless more routers start offering OpenDNS, DNS-O-Matic, or custom options. OpenDNS, I know that is a PITA, but if you want us users to keep our IPs accurate, then talking to DynDNS is the A#1 way.
2) Marc's solution looks good, but I'm not giving him my password. :)
3) If DNS-O-Matic would add the ability for me to flag one of the services as the "ip source" service, that would seem like a really cool feature. (Basically Marc's solution merged with theirs, I can't imagine it would be hard)
4) If there was some software I could run on my computer that could detect whether or not I was connected to MY router, and only update my IP when I was, that would also be a viable solution (for me at least). A more robust version of OpenDNS's app could do this.
very cool.. this will be very helpful! any updates?
That feature would be very great.
Its very difficult to change a existing solution, and it would make many thing easier.
Just change the input box from IP to IP or hostname, and except only the biggest hoster like (no-ip.com,dyndns,) so abuse would be prevent.
thanks
no-ip and several routers could send ip updates!
written by dudumaroja 148 days ago
Rating: 0
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well, i've tried, i had to go back to my providers DNS!
they are a little slow (just a bit) at least they dont force me to use yahoo (yewww)
"Implementing that particular suggestion is fairly impossible, to put it mildly."
really?
*cough* *cough* CNAME *cough* *cough*
Why not just ask DynDNS to add it to their side?
They could call DNSOMATIC whenever a IP update is triggered on their site. DNSOMATIC then updates OpenDNS.
written by rasmith721 46 days ago
Rating: 0
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I'd really like a feature similar to this. Having the PC update the IP address isn't nearly as desirable as having the router do it, and most routers do DynDNS/Custom DynDNS. My router happens to support TZO.com, ods.org and a couple others, but not DNS-O-Matic.
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I would have to agree that this feature would be very beneficial to some of us. I personally don't like the idea of leaving a PC on just to update these settings, mainly from a "green" standpoint. I don't require access to my PC all the time and while I can assume that my IP doesn't change here much in Comcast-land, I still would like a clientless solution. My Linksys WRT55AGv2 only updates DynDNS and 3rd party firmware support is nil.