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Alias Your IP Address

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The IP address is sometimes hard to memorize. This note explains how you can associate a memorable name such as bzfs.ducati.org to your IP address. This is especially useful if you are hosting the server in a connection with a dynamic IP. Since your IP is changing every once in a while, it is particularly helpful to alias it with a name that remains the same all the time. Even if your IP is static, it is much easier to remember KoolBZserver.mydomain.org than something like 169.19.123.234

One way to alias your IP is to get a free account at www.dyndns.org. Once you register and login, you will be able to attach a domain name to your IP address. There are dozens of top-level domains to choose from. Once you log in to dyndns.org, choose static or dynamic DNS depending on whether your provider assigns you a static or dynamic ip, click on "add a new host", and choose the name of your preference.

If your IP is dynamic (this means that your machine changes it IP once every while), you'll also need to download and run a client program that will periodically tell dyndns.org what the IP of your machine is. The dyndns.org site has a page with a list of clients. It is fairly easy to set them up (basically, you only need to install them. Most of them will let you specify if you want the client to startup every time you start your computer, and also how often the client should check whether your IP has changed (say, for example, every 5 minutes).

NOTE: dyndns.org will *NOT* let you choose any top-level domain (the xxx.org part of the domain name). It will give you a list of a few dozen domains (such as game-host.org) to which you can add your own preferred name (resulting in myname.game-host.org). If you want your register and use your own domain name (something like my.domain.org), you'll have to pay them some money. Depending on the registration service you use, prices range between $8 and $20 a year. If you don't want to pay, you have less of a choice, but at least you can get a name.