Show HN: zzzz.io, a free DynDNS replacement I created on the weekend
zzzz.io
zzzz.io
I would disagree. This may look like a replacement from the end-user's point of view, but it does not address the real issues of DNS management: space to store all zone data, bandwidth to support requests flow, resources to handle the load.
Either you are just proxying someone else's service, or you are running your own on (supposedly) limited resources. Am I wrong?
Moreover, I heard from DynDNS engineers that the main reason that led them to stop their free hostname offer was: it was abused for spamming too often. How do you intend to cope with that?
You're absolutely right! However, as you said, it solves the user's problem from their point of view.
The main reason I started this project was that other dyndns alternatives (whether they be proxies or "fully-fledged" operations) have rather ugly domain names, in my opinion. 'zzzz' popped into my head, I saw that 'zzzz.io' was free, and decided to get it. A few weeks later, I finally got around to throwing a webapp together so others could benefit.
Not such a horrible thing to do, or?
And yes, the service is backed up by Amazon's Route 53. I did learn a thing or two about BIND and DNS from the experience though, which is also a plus.
"2012-03-29 18:20:33, 2 years ago: Free accounts not accessed at least once every 6 months will be considered dormant and unloaded from memory."
What does "dormant" mean here? Do they delete your DNS records? It might not be as draconian as what DynDNS was doing, but certainly a barrier you should consider.
Somewhat sadly, it was my github project that seemed at times to garner the most interest from outside, even though it was just a shoddy python script thrown together in a 10 minute cigarette break at work.
Your account at freedns.afraid.org has not been visited in at least 5 1/2 months.
User: Xxxxx Xxxxx (xxxxxxx) Last visited: 2013-09-21 (169 days ago)
Unless you visit the site anytime in the next 2 weeks, your account will be considered dormant. "Dormant" consists of unloading any stale DNS records from memory which you may have set up in the past.
This stale entries optimization will free up several gigabytes of memory, making it available for active users. This will allow a DNS server to do a cold configuration boot, and load in new zones in a fraction of the time and space.
Users supporting freedns.afraid.org with a premium plan of any kind (even the smallest) will not be affected.
Not sure about the beauty of 'zzzz', but it certainly is a good thing to learn by doing. Nice job.
You did not answer my question about spam. Are you taking measures to prevent your domain to being flagged as a spammer?
Is this project something you'd consider releasing the source code for (obviously I'm happy to write my own code if needs be but there's no point in me reinventing the wheel if you already have this sitting on a public git repo)
Plus, I quite like 'zzzz' in comparison to the domain names offered by other free dyndns alternatives out there.
For anyone building a dynamic IP service, freedns sets the level they should strive for.
dig -x `curl -s http://icanhazip.com`
Here in Belgium Telenet does that, which means for my home network I could just setup a CNAME record to that hostname.
I'm not one to jump to the nuclear option of banning clients outright - if I notice behaviour that's harmful and needs to be corrected, I'll email the individuals concerned and talk them through how to use the service more efficiently, while also improving my own documentation on the website (which I admit isn't as thorough as I'd like).
Does this work with the AirPort dynamic global hostname? I put my username and password in, but since my IP didn't change since I signed up I couldn't see if it was working right.
Even with a static or mostly static IPv6 address the ability to have a dual stack dynamic hostname where both the v4 (that changes a lot) and the v6 (which might change less) is still useful. It is also obviously useful as you roam between office and home and such and want to keep a hostname constant.
The route optimization mechanism means your packets can travel directly between the mobile node's care-of address and the other guy if they both support MIP, so no need to be even on the same continent.
Sadly MIP is mostly dead, though there seems to be a somewhat up to date (2013) Linux impl of Mobile IP v6 and NEMO for IPv4 here: http://umip.org/
My impression is that it was kind of overshadowed by IETF's efforts to make an architecturally pretty fix to the whole locator-vs-ID thing. This is the work leading to the LISP protocol. You can now find papers from Facebook, Cisco, etc advocating its deployment. Hopefully it will get popular at some point.
It would be fun to hack on this + a cryptocurrency component - let's say, zzzzcoin - people can pay an incredibly small sum of zzzzcoin per request. This could be used to deter spam, remain free/affordable, reward early adopters, and turn into meaningful revenue.
I've been pondering git-dns.io for a while - storing DNS in git and using hooks to trigger rebuilds. Unfortunately most of the DNS resellers are expensive, and using Amazon means your hosted domains get given "random nameservers", which complicates the setup for somebody importing lots of domains.
I'd love to be able to say "Use a/b/c.git-dns.io" for the nameservers, but all the resellers of DNS make you pay a lot of cash up-front for vanity nameservers, which I think would make the thing unprofitable.
(Running bind/tinydns on three toy virtual machines around the world would work - but DNS-servers are traditionally a DoS magnet, so I know I'd get taken down sooner or later if I went down that path.)
That said I think I pretty much shelved the idea when I considered how hard it would be to get paying customers.
And yes, it can modify your localhost:9999 to mydomain:80. Why is that usefull? My ISP blocks ports upto 8999, so i wouldn't run a webserver / ftp / smtp / ... without paying extra for unlocking those ports :)
Email me if you run into trouble.
It's not really about the money but about the rush of endorphins you get when an email arrives in your inbox to the effect that a total stranger found something you made so useful that they decided to give you a few euro out of the good of their own heart.
The big difference is when you are inside your local network behind the router, or at work behind a firewall simple accessing the wan-ip won't reach your machine, unless you do port-forwarding (which isn't always straightforward or even possible.)
Ngrok solves this problem by being in the middle, both your machine and a person visiting alias.ngrok.com are connecting to ngrok, ngrok just passes the data along.
What this service however is good for is to have a dns address that always points to your local machine or your home network if your ISP doesn't provide you with a static ip (thus your ip changes every so often).
That pretty much is (or was, not sure how most games currently handle networking) the main frustration of setting up a game server at home for your friends at their homes.
One solution back then was to use Hamachi to create a "virtual lan network". Btw for some use-cases you could even use "ssh -L <local port>:<remote computer>:<remote port> <user>@<remote ip>" with a server, and certainly nowadays you can get a vps at 12$/year (nothing fancy, but good enough for tunnelling ports).
The application is basically a thin layer in front of AWS's Route 53. All user data is stored safely and securely.
Are you just as suspicious of popular applications that sprang up from hackdays?
Minor gripe:
"Why did you make zzzz?
DynDNS was a very popular dynamic DNS provider which in the 90s [did something?]."
It basically just supports updating the IP address associated with your subdomain. As noted on that page, you can simply GET the URL, and your subdomain will point to the IP you performed the request from, or you can specify an IP address explicitly.