Dynamic DNS for multiple ports?

Question

I have used no-ip.com to forward my web server to the web and I have loved it. But now my needs are different. I have a server running Windows server 2008 Datacenter edition. I want to have a web server on port 80, a RDP service on another port, and an email service on another. I need to know
1. what FREE service can I use that can forward all of my needed ports (no-ip only allows 80 and 21 as far as I know)
2. for the service reccommended in question 1, does the IP address update tool work in windows server 2008 32-bit?
3. can I set up a domain server and an email server using my given dynamic IP address? or will that not work.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Ok lets address this one piece at a time.



DNS forwards a domain name to an IP address. no-ip is DDNS meaning you have an app that checks what your current dynamically assigned IP is and then updates your A record at no-ip.



Lets assume your URL is www.kenrocks.com (for obvious reasons :-P) and your IP is 1.2.3.4. This of course is dynamic and could change but thats ok because the ddns app updates that A record.



Now... you have a firewall. You want to allow certain PORTS to be open to the outside. A port is a number that a service listens on. For instance your web server listens on port 80 and or 443. So thats 1.2.3.4:80 Right? Well RDP listens on port 3389. So open 3389 on your firewall.



Then in your RDP client you simply tell it you want to connect to www.kenrocks.com. Your computer will look to its primary DNS server to resolve www.kenrocks.com to 1.2.3.4 and connect on port 3389 (default RDP port).



So what the hell am I blabbing about? Don't use your DNS to forward ports use it as it is intended to resolve names to IP's. Your firewall/router is what will forward the ports. no-ip is great, it does exactly what you want, I use it myself.



For email that's another animal. CAN you run a mail server off a dynamic IP? YES!! But it are compromises. We can control the spam issue with a SPF record.



I will put this on my watchlist. Reply if you have followup questions.



Ken

Answer 2

You can NOT run a recognised mail server without static IP. Most mail services will blacklist it AND your domain as it can not return a proper reverse DNS lookup. Domain servers do NOT work over the Internet unless you set up vpn connections on every machine you need to connect to it, so you need to have a router with vpn support. For all the services you want you need to subsctibe to a static IP with your provider. They charge extra. You also may be requested to subscribe to a business broadband connection. That typically cost 3 to 4 ties as much as a home connection. If you forget the mail server you need to subscribe to a real dynamic DNs service which does just htat. No-ip obviously is not true dynamic dns as it controls the ports you can use. Proper dynamic DNS just points your selected domain name at whatever IP it is notified of and you just use whatever ports you like. But get a decent router with dynamic DNS client built in.

Answer 3

I'm guessing you're running IIS on this bad boy server and that's super cool! You'll not need to change a thing amigo, just open up the good old Web Platform Installer and install Application Request Routing and URL Rewrite. Once you've got them installed you can just close and reopen the IIS console (if it was open) then under the main screen open up Application Request Routing and the ONLY thing you need to do is enable the proxy server.

Now for RDP for example, create a virtual directory, name it RDP and point it to an empty folder anywhere on your drive. I still like to drop them in wwwroot myself, but it really doesn't matter. On the options screen for your RDP virtual directory you want to open up the URL rewrite, make a new blank rule and name it something jazzy like "RDP Rewrite" (really catchy right). You want to set the pattern to wildcard, put a * in the box and then at the bottom where it says what to rewrite you'll want to put something like the fillowing:

http://127.0.0.1:(RDP Port you're using)/{R:0}

In case Yahoo parses that it's the { then an R then a : then a zero (0) and a } at the end.

Save that bad boy, restart IIS and then browse to whatever your domain name is /RDP and DONE!

You'll still need to open ports on your router/firewall to allow inbound and outbound traffic on these ports but it should work like a champ. The URL rewrite allows for requests of any kind to come in on port 80 and resolve to whatever other port you need. It's the server using it's local (inside the firewall) IP address so it's pretty fantastic.

You might have a bit of an issue with the RDP now that I'm thinking about it but just be lazy like me - go to www.logmein.com and sign up for a free account. Login to Log Me In on your server and click on the Add Computer button - follow the steps and setup the host on your server. Once it's done you can access it from an iPhone/iPod/iPad, Android anything, Windows Phone/Tablet and PC - pretty much anything you can connect to the web can access it. You'll probably get put on a Free Trail of Pro (which rocks but it's expensive) so after the install just find out how to change it from a Pro to a Free version. You can have up to 10 devices on Log Me In free too so it's pretty awesome!

Anyways URL Rewrite, Application Request and Firewall ports DONE! Good luck and feel free to message me if you run into some snags. I'm just writing this from memory, so I could have missed a step or two.