Easiest way to keep a domain active?
 

Hi,

I have a linux box at home configured as a web and mail server. I also have a domain name registered for it. As things stand now, it works fine, with me giving the registrar for my domain name an IP address furnished by the ISP, and the ISP making sure that that maps to my computer somehow (it's not a static address, but it works). I get my email and everyone who wants to can find my website.

I will be leaving for several months and will not have access to the computer, but I would like to keep the domain name name active, and at least send an autoresponse to anyone sends me email during that time. I pretty much have to unplug the computer from my house.

A friend offered to let me put the computer in his house, where he already has a router that he uses for wireless connections (that's all he uses), and I could plug my machine into one of the 4 ethernet ports on the machine. All I need is a way to tell my registrar where to find my computer. Alas, his ISP/line provider, the local cable TV company, won't give me a static address or provide any other way for me to give an ip address to the registrar.

Is there some easy way to make this work, to suck my own ip address down from the modem and hope it does not change, or is this a dead end? Should I just let a hosting service handle my mail, and give up on the website for a few months? I've never used a hosting service, any ideas or recommendations in that department would be appreciated.

If your only problem is the fact that your IP address at your friend's house will not be static, you could try a service such as DynDNS.com. Some routers even have settings in their firmware that will automatically update DynDNS each time a new IP address is assigned.

If you do go this route, I would make sure that the cable company does not block the incoming mail port (many of them do).

who is your registrar? you need a name server to point to your machine. so your registrar whatever.com would point to a local dns name server which would point to your computer. DynDNS takes care of this for you, it forward dns requests to a ip address. A normal registrar, say yahoo or godaddy etc. does not do this. It asks you to put in a nameserver. say ns1.whatever.com. and requests for that domain name are forwarded to your name server. So 1. I guess I'm not real sure how you have it set up right now that works with a domain name and 2. If you have a domain registered to your ip address then you can change that, but it would take 24 - 72 hrs for it to propogate through the internet. Again, without some type of name server on his local network, it's not going to work. You would HAVE to use DynDNS or similar service for this. If this is who you are using now, then look up your friends ip address WhatIsMyIP.org and input that into the DynDNS fields.

My registrar is Network Solutions - As it is set up now, I give them what amounts to a static ip address given to me by my ISP, and that's it.

I didn't know about DynDNS, it is intriguing, but while I'm gone it may be easier to let a web hosting service (like yahoo or godaddy) deal with it for me.

Thanks.

if all you have to supply them is an ip address and they forward the traffic to your computer, changing it to his ip address should work. Just remember you will have to set up port forwarding on his router to allow access to the services you are using.

Thanks, nice and bret. More than enough to work with here.