Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Instant Messaging

Author:Wesley Felter
Posted:8/1/1999; 6:40:36 PM
Topic:Today's scriptingNews Outline
Msg #:8994 (In response to 8989)
Prev/Next:8993 / 8995

The only people who need what Microsoft and AOL offer are people without a way to associate their name with an IP address. Or maybe you have something else in mind??

Yep. You don't need a static IP address as long as you have a DNS server that will let you update a record whenever you want. So I could create a DNS entry called wesley.felter.org and then have my IM client update it every time my IP adress changes. I would probably set the time to live pretty small; maybe 10 minutes.

There are already several services which provide dynamic DNS; the main downside is that I don't think there are any free ones (Why not include it free in every dialup account? Dynamic DNS can't be more expensive to provide than Web hosting, and I get that free.) Also, all of the services I've heard of are total hacks that use HTTP instead of the standard dynamic DNS+DNS security protocol.

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