[TriLUG] Questions on dyndns.org

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Thu, 2002-10-03 at 12:43, Bill Vinson wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 12:27:19PM -0400, Jeremy Portzer wrote:
> > 
> > Huh?  DNS is responsible for changing the hostname to an IP address.  It
> > has nothing to do with port numbers.   NAT/masquerading firewalls can
> > change port numbers, but that's unrelated to DNS. 
> 
> Actually, that isn't completely correct. DNS has nothing to do with it
> but Dynamic DNS services do. Some of these service will take foo.bar.com
> and point it to 24.25.74.36:8080. So, yes DynamicDNS can take ports into
> consideration, but it is not actually part of the DNS system that you
> are thinking of.

Okay, but in that case foo.bar.com would be hosted at the service
provider, right -- the Dynamic "DNS" provider?  In which case it's not
really the DNS that's dynamic -- DNS is remaining static, pointing to
the provider's servers.  Instead, it's really a web address forwarding
service, like http://www.pobox.com/~jeremyp/ -- it just uses the domain
name instead of another part of the URL to forward from.  (I understand
some systems use frames and other gimmickry to hide the forwarding.)

I hate it when service providers take clearly-defined, technical terms,
and reuse them inappropriately.  Creates a lot of confusion, like this
thread!  Oh well, blame it on the marketing department. :-)

> From what I have heard, yes some do actually block it. Supposedly some
> of the regional RoadRunner systems do, but luckily not here in the
> triangle. However, I have not seen it first hand, so YMMV.

Okay.  Certainly the major broadband providers in the Triangle do not
block port 80.

--Jeremy