Questions[dynamic-ip](server)

I would like to host a CalDAV and CardDAV server for devices that will roam between being on the LAN to outside my network (such as my iPhone and laptops). A static IP is prohibitively expensive.

I have a my own domain, a Mac Mini with Lion Server, a SonicWall TZ 200 and a dyn.com dynamic address (the SonicWall keeps the dynamic account updated). I would normally set up a static IP and use split horizon DNS so those roaming devices can point to server.mydomain.com and function on and off my LAN.

Is a similar setup possible with the dynamic address? I am happy to set up the clients with either server.mydomain.com or myaccount.dyndns.org but I would prefer to use my domain.

Would either hairpin NAT on the SonicWall or split horizon DNS using the Lion Server allow this to work?

My hosting provider (amen.pt) told me I can keep my e-mails and webmail hosted with them and host the website elsewere. For this to work I need to change the DNS A record 'www' to the IP of the other server.

My question (which I asked them, but haven't heard of them so far...) is if this IP must be static or can this configuration handle a dynamic IP. This is because I'm thinking of moving the website to Webfaction and I think I have a dynamic IP there...

Thanks!

It seems that certain home router firmware is designed to work with Dynamic DNS services (e.g. noip & dyndns) to serve a subdomain from a server behind a consumer ISP. On a similar note, are there any dynamic dns services that will work with a shared web hosting account?

Example

For instance, Dreamhost has an API that can retrieve a domain name's IP address. In theory, the dynamic DNS service would periodically make a request to the Dreamhost API for the website's IP address. If the IP address on Dreamhost changes, the DNS host would automatically make the necessary changes to the zone file for that website as soon as it notices a discrepancy.

Why?

In the past, I had paid for a static IP address on a shared host, my domain name was registered at GoDaddy and the nameserver was set to EveryDNS. Due to catastrophic hardware failure at the shared host, my site was moved and the IP address changed.

In the example setup above, the DNS records would have automatically updated. Instead, I had to manually update my A record.

Question Summary

1. Is there a Dynamic DNS hosting service and shared web host that will allow this?

2. Is the solution proposed in the above example viable?

3. Bonus (at the risk of exposing my ignorance on this subject): are there any other ways, outside of DNS, to detect the IP address for a website? Perhaps a script in your shared hosting directory could detect an IP change and notify the DNS host?

Thanks in advance!

Our servers (all CentOS) are all restricted by IP but often i am out and about and stuck on a dynamic IP address. Using a DynDNS widget I have set this dynamic IP to always sync with a DynDNS hostname but how should i go about making this resolve to an IP in hosts.allow. For the moment i've written a cron script that runs every few minutes and checks the IP assigned to that hostname and writes the dynamic IP to hosts.allow but i'm not too keen on that as a solution. Is there a more elegant way i could be doing this?

Thanks.

I have a domain http://www.example.com which has a hosting package and website on it.

I also have a http://example.no-ip.org domain which contains some content I would like to appear under the same domain.

Can I setup a .htaccess file at http://www.example.com/proxy/ which proxies the files at http://www.example.no-ip.org/files/

Similarly, could I host an entire domain in the same way?, e.g. http://www.example2.com/ proxying http://example.no-ip.org/files2/

Alternatively, if someone were to say "That's stupid, use this free (or super-cheap) dynamic DNS host:" I would probably accept that answer.