ISPs and Static IP's!

[Pasty901]

Hey Guys and Gals,

As usual i have a dilema! To cut a long story short my ISP WAS as good value and now im getting ripped off sooooooo i wanna change now ive found a REALLY good deal with ukonline but they wont give me a static ip - no matter how much i beg

Anyway is there an easy way to work around a dynamic ip with my webserver...originally i was thinking route my dns through something like no-ip but apparently thats not gonna work - so i read.

Any ideas anyone?

Cheers !

[killer_cow]

Hey Pasty,

This will most probabily not work with your ISP, but I managed to get my IP stuck in one place by just keeping my router constantly connected to the internet, this way my ISP for some reason have never changed my IP again, maybe as long as it has a connection to it, the DHCP server at the ISP's end when renewing, doesnt change the IP assigned to my router..?

But again, I doubt this would work with your ISP, I think mine (blueyonder) have just overlooked this slight loop-hole.

I've had the same IP for 3 years and not paid a penny towards static IP charges.

-KC

[igalan]

Isn't it possible to use DynDNS? Our IP at work is dynamic, it can change twice a month. I am using DynDNS with a client running here so when it changes it's automatically updated.

[greffov]

DynDNS is the way to go. Don't know if there is a winblows client though.

[thornyone]

Re greffov dont you mean windblows

[igalan]

I use DeeEnEs .

[Pasty901]

Well people it seems i shouldnt listen to what i read else where on the net! Despite reading that using no-ip will not work i thought id give it a go and low and behold it does!

Well happy now, thank you all for your help im off now to sign up for my 8mb line with UKOnline!

[Pasty901]

O...k slight problem, i feel this one might be a greff issue...

back to my wonderful mail server

i changed my A records to C names the pop3 and the dns stuff seems to work fine however it doesnt seem to like my mx record when im adding to my dns redirect - keeps saying "Mail Server is invalid: Hostname could not be resolved"! Now i can ping it fine and it goes to the rite place - am i missing something here?

[greffov]

Originally Posted by thornyone

Re greffov dont you mean windblows

*sigh*
even god makes typos.

Originally Posted by Pasty901

O...k slight problem, i feel this one might be a greff issue...

Ohw great... something is broken, so I probably did it

Originally Posted by Pasty901

back to my wonderful mail server

i changed my A records to C names the pop3 and the dns stuff seems to work fine however it doesnt seem to like my mx record when im adding to my dns redirect - keeps saying "Mail Server is invalid: Hostname could not be resolved"! Now i can ping it fine and it goes to the rite place - am i missing something here?

yes you do:
% host -tmx pasty901.com
pasty901.com mail is handled by 10 mail.staddon.biz.
% host mail.staddon.biz
mail.staddon.biz is an alias for mail.staddon.biz.

oops! how am I ever going to resolve this! Luckily BIND doesn't let itself fooled into an endless loop. Be happy your windows machine doesn't do the DNS stuff, because it would probably be completely locked up looping by now.

The MX record should point to an A record, not a CNAME, because the Mail eXchanger should be directly resolveable. That's exactly the reason why for real institutions you always see something like this:
% host -tmx cwi.nl
cwi.nl mail is handled by 50 hera.cwi.nl.
cwi.nl mail is handled by 100 bacchus.cwi.nl.
% host -tmx ed.ac.uk
ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 5 renko.ucs.ed.ac.uk.
ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 5 pascoe.ucs.ed.ac.uk.
ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 5 dalziel.ucs.ed.ac.uk.
ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 5 haymarket.ed.ac.uk.
% host -tmx inf.ed.ac.uk
inf.ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 8 renko.ucs.ed.ac.uk.
inf.ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 8 pascoe.ucs.ed.ac.uk.
inf.ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 8 dalziel.ucs.ed.ac.uk.
inf.ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 8 haymarket.ed.ac.uk.
inf.ed.ac.uk mail is handled by 4 postbox.inf.ed.ac.uk.

not one of those hosts are called 'mail', the closest one is 'postbox' which is clearly a dedicated box for that. At least none of them is a CNAME:

% host hera.cwi.nl
hera.cwi.nl has address 192.16.191.8
% host bacchus.cwi.nl
bacchus.cwi.nl has address 192.16.191.9
% host renko.ucs.ed.ac.uk
renko.ucs.ed.ac.uk has address 129.215.13.3
% host pascoe.ucs.ed.ac.uk
pascoe.ucs.ed.ac.uk has address 129.215.128.240
% host dalziel.ucs.ed.ac.uk
dalziel.ucs.ed.ac.uk has address 129.215.13.80
% host haymarket.ed.ac.uk
haymarket.ed.ac.uk has address 129.215.128.53
% host postbox.inf.ed.ac.uk
postbox.inf.ed.ac.uk has address 129.215.216.3

(ok I should have scripted this, but I was to lazy to think about an awk script to do it)

[Pasty901]

Originally Posted by greffov

Ohw great... something is broken, so I probably did it

Nah but u usually know how to fix it

Ok rite i get its looping, but the prob is i dont or at least i wont have a static ip for the A record to point to - anyway around this?

hehe cheers Greff u always have the answers to my problems!

[greffov]

hmmm... but without A record the system won't work. Even when you haven't got a static IP, you still need an A record...

[Pasty901]

Ok but i dont seem to be able to set an A record without an ip address?

[greffov]

yeah, so you need a client utility or something to set you this A record automagically to the right value.

It won't be perfect in any way!

[Pasty901]

Ok ive gone full circle in the last few days and now im back to where i started...
Websites work
Email pop3 works
Email smtp - does not

Heres my log...im thinkin its the Winsock error thats my problem but i really have no clue how to fix it...

Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:49: Session 404; child 1
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Parsing Message <d:\mdaemon\remoteq\pd50000000028.msg>
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: From: helen@staddon.biz
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: To: pasty901@staddon.eclipse.co.uk
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Subject: test
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Message-ID: <42A2D591.8070809@staddon.biz>
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: MX-record resolution of [staddon.eclipse.co.uk] in progress (DNS Server: 192.168.2.1)...
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: * P=020 D=staddon.eclipse.co.uk TTL=(1088) MX=[mx2.ex.eclipse.net.uk]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: * P=010 D=staddon.eclipse.co.uk TTL=(1088) MX=[mx1.ex.eclipse.net.uk]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Attempting MX: P=010 D=staddon.eclipse.co.uk TTL=(1088) MX=[mx1.ex.eclipse.net.uk]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Attempting SMTP connection to [mx1.ex.eclipse.net.uk : 25]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: A-record resolution of [mx1.ex.eclipse.net.uk] in progress (DNS Server: 192.168.2.1)...
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: D=mx1.ex.eclipse.net.uk TTL=(1043) A=[212.104.129.52]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Attempting SMTP connection to [212.104.129.52 : 25]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:46: Waiting for socket connection...
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:47: Winsock Error 10061 The other host is either down or has refused to connect with you at that IP and/or on that port.
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:47: Attempting MX: P=020 D=staddon.eclipse.co.uk TTL=(1088) MX=[mx2.ex.eclipse.net.uk]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:47: Attempting SMTP connection to [mx2.ex.eclipse.net.uk : 25]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:47: A-record resolution of [mx2.ex.eclipse.net.uk] in progress (DNS Server: 192.168.2.1)...
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:48: D=mx2.ex.eclipse.net.uk TTL=(1050) A=[212.104.129.55]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:48: Attempting SMTP connection to [212.104.129.55 : 25]
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:48: Waiting for socket connection...
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:49: Winsock Error 10061 The other host is either down or has refused to connect with you at that IP and/or on that port.
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:49: This message is 0 minutes old; it has 60 minutes left in this queue
Sun 2005-06-05 11:33:49: SMTP session terminated (Bytes in/out: 0/0)

[greffov]

% host www.staddon.biz
www.staddon.biz is an alias for pasty901.no-ip.biz.
pasty901.no-ip.biz has address 81.xxx.xx.xxx

voila, websites have a nice A record

if you do something like
staddon.biz MX pasty901.no-ip.biz.
pasty901.com MX pasty901.no-ip.biz

then it will work!



your winsock problem is just plain nasty!

try and see if telnet mx1.ex.eclipse.net.uk 25 works out for you (should return in: 220 mxa04.ex.eclipse.net.uk ESMTP) (type quit + enter to abort). If that doesn't then either your firewall, or theirs is configured not to allow you. Make a connection to the MX host for orakel.ods.org to check if you're not sure, that host does allow connections from anyone at the moment.