Dynamic DNS/E-mail

Introduction

It appears that Bell will be moving to dynamic IP addressing with DHCP for the ADSL service. For the people who are running sservers on their ADSL/HSE connections, dynamic IP will create problems:

• For WWW access, the DNS record must be dynamically updated every time the DHCP lease expires.

• More seriously, if there is an email server, then if the IP address changes, then the email might go to someone else's machine. Best case, the email will be relayed to a backup MX. Worse, it may bounce. Worst of all, a malicious ADSL user can run an SMTP sucker and read the email. The SMTP sender will gladly relay my email to anyone capable of talking SMTP.

This OX project is a system that would provide dynamic DNS and safe email to OX members (or all those in Ottawa-Carleton on a cost-recovery basis):

• blah.ox.org dynamically redirected to an IP address.
• Names such as inode.org may be redirected; their owner must pay Internic fees themselves.
• We need a secure way of telling the DNS server our new address. The DNS cannot authenticate based on IP. We don't want someone to spoof a site, redirecting its traffic.
• Email to user@ox.org can be held for pickup. Normally, an ADSL user would poll for mail every 15 minutes or so. We need a secure way of doing this. POP? SMTP polling?
• perhaps email to blah@blah2 can be held as well.

Implementation Ideas

DNS

• DNS with dynamic update (via either RSA signature or preshared keys) is something that we should setup and experiment with. You need bind v8. (8.2 should be out next week, with v9 in the spring)
• FTP a .zone file to a server

E-Mail

• SMTP has ETRN which may be useful for this.
• UUCP over TCP

Contact Information

To subscribe to the mailing list which discusses this topic as well as others related to the creation of an Ottawa area wide Network, put the word "subscribe" in the message body of a message to ottawa-man-request@jammys.net.

• Mailing list archive

Last update: $Date: 1998/12/31 18:22:03 $