Changing IP addresses

We connect to our clients using pcanywhere, but they have dynamic IP addres

[mapang]

Hi, at our company we use PCanywhere to connect remotely to our clients' sites. The problem is however that they have constantly changing IP addresses. I was looking at signing up for a dns service, but am concerned about security since all information will be going through the DNS sevice server. Someone had suggested a software application, ipdetective. I wanted to know if anyone has tried it and what do you think about it. Thanks alot. I really enjoy these forums. Very useful.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 5:18 am (utc) on Aug. 24, 2004]
[edit reason] No URLs please [/edit]

[MattyMoose]

but am concerned about security since all information will be going through the DNS sevice server.

Why would you be concerned? If someone is interested in getting to these boxes, they'll get to them anyway, regardless of if they have proper hostnames or just IP addresses, and all they would get would be an IP address, no passwords for pcAnywhere or the like.

I'd look at registering a domain (something obscure like "hummanahummana.ws" or whatever), and sign up that domain with someone like ZoneEdit, which allows dynamic DNS updates for DHCP hosts. Then, create a hostname for each computer that you need to connect to, and then you can run an automatic script that will update the IP address for that hostname on each box.

So, say you've added a host "customer5.hummanahummana.com", and their IP changes. the client will connect every day (or whatever) to the zoneedit update server, and update the IP address for that hostname. So, when you need to connect, "customer5.hummanahummana.com" still points to that box.

HTH!
-MM

[encyclo]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], mapang!

but am concerned about security since all information will be going through the DNS sevice server.

No, the information is not going through the DNS server at all - only the DNS queries are. A DNS server is when you type in a domain name, and a query is sent to the DNS server saying "where's example.com?". The DNS server answers "It's at IP address 123.456.789.012", and then the user agent makes the connection with the server at that IP address. The DNS server has no further involvement with the data transfer.

Using DNS servers has no impact on your security whatsoever.