DDDNS
DDDNS - Delegated Dynamic DNS - ensures that if your dynamic DNS name resolves, then it is because your server is present (i.e. dialled out or connected). Your DNS name is delegated to your own name server at your current IP address. If your server is not present, or if another server has taken your former IP address, then the lookup fails, and the name does not resolve. This is not a problem, because it indicates (correctly) that you are not there.

Technical details
Dynamic DNS (DDNS) is a well-worn technique for associating a DNS name with a dynamic IP address, usually ADSL, but occasionally dial-up as well. With DDNS, what happens if your machine is not connected for some time? A person visiting your web site may see another site. Mail to your domain may be rejected with a rude message ("relay access denied") (or, even worse, it may be accepted).

DDDNS allows you to run a web site and mail server on a dynamic address with the assurance that if your link is down your name will also be down. Having a reliable DNS name means that you can do all the things you should require a static IP address for:

  • Reliably deliver mail directly to your dynamic internet link. You can run your own mail server, and not pay per account or per-MB of storage.
  • Run a web server on your cheap and fast ADSL link, avoiding expensive hosting charges.
  • Run other services, e.g. intranet, VPNs, other remote control protocols, etc.
Miscellaneous notes
  • How is a DNS lookup failure handled? Well, DNS servers (according to the RFC) cache that a particular IP address is not a valid DNS server for a domain for 10 minutes. When you NS records time out, your new address is used immediately, provided you have a new dynamic address.
  • To configure an ETRN mail spool, the dsmtp mailer for sendmail works quite nicely. Configuration of exim, postfix, qmail and MSEXCH for spooling mail to dddns is left as an exercise to the reader.
  • Our technique is quite similar to the approach of registering your domain using a dynamic DNS provider to point to you as the DNS server. This is described by the GnuDIP project. In that approach, you also run a DNS server at your dynamic address. It is a fail-safe arrangement, but mail to you may bounce immediately if your line is down (I think), since your MX records do not even exist if your system is not connected. (This can spoil your day.)
  • rant: Just in case you wanted to know, the biggest reason we switched to DDDNS is that we had endless hassles with POP3. One of the big reasons to use DDDNS is that POP3 has a fundamental problem. What do you do with a mail in your mailbox that cannot be delivered -- 450 Temporary Failure? You try again, but often enough, that temporary failure is permanent. So you retry. How many times? Well, in most cases, you will probably retry that mail indefinitely. Since fetchmail does not have a local queueing mechanism, this means repeatedly downloading the mail, and attempting to deliver it repeatedly. It is really easy to kill your stable fetchmail implementation this way. Even worse is if you run postfix configured with unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 450. In this case, fetchmail appears to work initially, but begins to loop as soon as someone drops mail for a user that doesn't exist. (Very sad, and sometimes very expensive.)

About
Audience: Wireless and ADSL users. Dial-up users may be interested too.
System requirements: bind 9, nsupdate and `host'. netdate is recommended if you are not keeping your clock in sync with ntpd
Language: bash
Source license: GPL

Related services
If you are interested in this software, you may like to send us a large payment, or make use our related services:

  • DNS hosting for dyn.ledge.co.za subdomain: Free for South African users*
  • 1 year DNS hosting with DDDNS update: Our DNS servers host your domain (e.g. wallpaperremovals.co.za) and accept updates from you. R128.00 (excl. VAT)
  • Backup MX server accepting ETRN: R110.00 (excl. VAT) per month for dial-up, R100.00 (excl. VAT) per month for ADSL. This applies per domain.
  • Client installation fee R972.00 (excl. VAT) (installation of DDDNS software on existing Linux gateway machine).
*Free? Yes, free, as in beer. We know that a good proportion of people will (a) buy the backup mail spooling offer and (b) pay us to set it up and (c) DNS is not really bandwidth intensive.

Download and documentation

Automatic account failover
We have included our failover scripts to handle multiple simultaneous pppoe connections. This is to overcome the 3GB traffic quota offered in South Africa.

  • Initially you use a single account for internet connection
  • When the first account is bandlimited, you bring up an additional account.
  • You continue to use the limited account for South African traffic, and use the additional account for all other traffic
  • If / when you exceed the traffic limit on your second account, then the system will keep switching accounts until it finds an unlimited one. (If someone can add logic to detect that all accounts are bandlimited, please do so).
There are a number of complications that the scripts take care of -
  • Handling inbound connections to two different addresses without having asymmetric routing (Linux advanced routing rules)
  • Keeping dddns up to date for multiple interfaces, and also handling the case of two names referring to one interface -- well, it used to, but that's now integrated into the standard dddns.