Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
After saving these changes, you must restart the
ddclient
service by typing in
sudo
service ddclient restart
.
You now have a domain name that points to your home IP address. As we progress,
you might want to test various applications, and for that, you will need to open ports
on your router. Unfortunately, coniguring your router is not part of this topic, as
each vendor handles this differently. Refer to the manual that came with your router
to learn how to open and forward ports.
Dynamic DNS domain workaround
You might not like the domain names provided by Dynamic DNS providers,
and instead you would like to use a domain you already own. I own the domain
piotrkula.com
, and I would like to use
pi.piotrkula.com
instead of the strange
pi.craftx.bix
domain name.
Log in to your domain name panel and add a new subdomain. Edit the DNS records
and make sure that it has absolutely no
A
records associated with it. You will add a
new CNAME record; the value in my case is
pi.craftx.bix
. Enter your dynamic
DNS domain there.
Now the domain
pi.piotrkula.com
tells the visitor to look at the
pi.craftx.bix
DNS record instead. The visitor will find an
A
record there and that will send them
to the correct IP address, which is your Pi. This is not a redirect, and the top domain
name will not change. Visitors will not even know you are using a dynamic DNS
unless they inspect your private domain record and track down that the CNAME
record belongs to a dynamic DNS company. But as long as the domain works, there
is no reason to inspect it.
The only drawback to using this workaround is speed. Whenever a visitor looks up
the DNS records for the first time, it might take several seconds before a connection
is established. After the first request, things go smoothly as the client usually caches
the IP for the duration of the session, regardless of what TTL is set on your
A
record.
Every new session might experience this delay as the TTL forces the client to read the
DNS again. Some dynamic DNS providers might even deliberately slow down DNS
lookups and require you to upgrade to premium DNS servers for a premium price.
