Introduction

Dynamic DNS

What is Dynamic DNS?
Dynamic DNS allows you to associate a dynamic IP address with a domain name.

The large majority of Broadband providers distribute dynamic IP addresses to their customers. This means that your external IP address will change.

Having a dynamic IP address will not affect most people if they are just surfing the web, reading e-mail or using chat programs. However, it is very difficult to run a server using a dynamic IP address.

Some Broadband Providers offer a Static IP Address service meaning that you external (WAN) IP address will never change. However, they often charge extra for this service. On the other hand, some Dynamic DNS services are free.

Dynamic DNS is named because it dynamically changes the association of IP address and Domain name (such as gsec1.com) as your Dynamic IP address changes. As a result, if your IP address changes then the Domain Name will still direct to your computer.

Analogy
An IP Address, in this sense, is like a telephone number; it allows one computer to “call” another. Having a Dynamic IP address is like having a phone that changes numbers from time to time. People would find it difficult to contact you.

Continuing the phone analogy, DNS can be seen to be a phonebook that allows your computer to look up the IP addresses of other computers. When you type in www.gsec1.com your computer uses a DNS server to look up and translate the domain name to the IP address of the gsec1 server.

Dynamic DNS Details
To configure Dynamic DNS, the following details are required:

Account Name
This is a friendly name set by you, to easily identify your Dynamic DNS account.

Service Provider
This is a list of Dynamic DNS providers that are supported by XGate. Before you can configure a Dynamic DNS account in XGate, you will first need to create an account with a Dynamic DNS provider.

User Name
The username you used when signing up to a Dynamic DNS provider

Password
The password you used when signing up to a Dynamic DNS provider.

Automatically Update every X days
This specifies how often XGate will automatically update the Dynamic DNS with your current IP address.

Retry Updates after X minutes.
This specifies how often XGate will try to update again if your attempt to update the Dynamic DNS with your current IP address fails.