Does your ISP give you a dynamic IP (most do)? Have you ever tried setting up a server from that Internet connection, setting up your Slingbox for Internet viewing or setting up a slew of IP-dependent services? Chances are those things broke when your IP changed and you had to reconfigure them. Enter DNS-O-Matic. A project from the folks at OpenDNS, DNS-O-Matic “gives you a free and easy way to announce your dynamic IP changes to multiple services with a single update.”
When you login to DNS-O-Matic using your OpenDNS credentials, you can add dynamic DNS services such as DynDNS, EveryDNS, OpenDNS, ZoneEdit and countless others. (If you’d like DNS-O-Matic to support another service, just let them know and they’ll add it.) Then you install a local client that informs DNS-O-Matic of your new IP and updates your IP on the services you’ve added. This makes it easy to update your IP across multiple dynamic DNS services.
I’m not going to lie – a good chunk of the people reading this post won’t even have a remote use for DNS-O-Matic. But for the people that rely on dynamic DNS services to ensure they maintain their connection configuration, DNS-O-Matic will be a lifesaver. Down the line, I can imagine router manufacturers like LinkSys and Netgear, startup service providers and so on supporting DNS-O-Matic as it supports many services in itself, saving them from having to support multiple DNS services. Most routers only support DynDNS if anything.
And if you have gone this far and are already sick of reading DNS, let me help you out: DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS DNS. ;-)
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
In my job remote services are the best tool I have. Thanks for this enlightening article and DNS,DNS,DNS right back at ya.
A nice tool but I only use DynDNS anyway. My linksys router updates that fine so I have no need to use the service yet.
This is perfect, I’ve been trying to figure out a reliable way to access data from my new media server remotely, especially when I’m away for several days at a time.
Could this be used with Amazon EC2?
This would be great!
hey, thank you for this tip. i will be using dynDNS so I keep that in mind if I need some more dynapic DNS DNS DNS services. :) we should try to do a record in using DNS on one single website :P
I used to use No-IP until I found that my router supported DynDNS natively. When DNS-O-Matic gets router companies to update their firmware, I’ll gladly switch.
Hey Paul great tip.
It was your website which helped me find opendns service and indaed am greatful to you.
I’m still a bit uncertain about using OpenDNS, I mean I do everything online now- shopping, banking, work- the sort of information you get worried about sending to a free service.
Slingbox easily solves the Dynamic IP problem out of the box as Sling has an Slingbox ID assigned to each install. IP address changing does not affect Slingbox.
I have been using DynDNS for years. Even though I am happy with it. Thanks for the post on an alternative.
Awesome little tool! Congrats to Dave and the rest of the crew :)
I’m using DNS-O-Matic now and it works great. Except that Vista blocks it during startup and each time I need to manually override Windows Defender. Anyone got around this problem yet? I already added the folder to the “do not scan” list but it doesn’t help.
Thanks