Vfrdtyky

Newbie programmer here. I'm building an app for an API that requires an IP address for authentication. Basically, users have to send the API management their IPs and then each time a computer makes a request to their server, it verifies whether it's coming from a registered IP.

Since I work in a number of different places and thus end up with different IPs, I thought it would be easiest to use DynDNS to establish a URL that points to whatever my current IP is and then send that URL to the API management. So my first question is if this approach would in fact work?

Secondly, assuming this would work, I set up ben.dynalias.com and downloaded the DynDNS Updater client. It appears to be working: the updater says status: OK and displays my current IP. However, when I navigate to the URL (ben.dynalias.com) there's no response. Should this be the case? How can I tell if it's working?

I don't see any reason it shouldn't work as long as your updaters aren't overwriting each other by running at the same time automatically from different locations.

You can ping ben.dynalias.com and see if your current ip matches.

I just hosted ben.dynalias.com and it gave me your IP.
Since there is no web server running on that IP, then your browser will not be able to show you a page result.
You can use http://www.kloth.net/services/nslookup.php
to check and see if you get the correct IP from a host lookup.
Depending on how often your IP changes this might not be a great solution as the DNS will cache your hostname and will not try and resolve it again until the TTL expires normally minimum 1 hour.

1. whether the API management accepts a hostname instead of an IP address is a question only they can answer. Some will, many won't as it's "easier" to hijack a domain name than to hijack an ip address.


2. trying to browse to you-address.dynalias.com that points to your own public address rarely works, even if you opened up the right ports because your router will be highly confused. The best way to test such a setup is by using a phone or tablet with 3g/GPRS internet - of course after you set up port forwarding in the router to point the appropriate port to your computer.