Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 16:42:39 +0100 (MET) From: "Julian Stacey jhs@freebsd.org" <jhs@vector.jhs.local> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Dynamic IP Site Pointers Message-ID: <199601081542.QAA02409@vector.jhs.local>
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-------- The Problem: I, like many other internet users, access freefall & other hosts via an ISP that uses dynamic IP (ie assigns me a `for this connection only' variant IP number ) I assume I'm not alone in wanting to know if other friends are on line on the internet, & yet as they & I are both dynamic IP, unless we both happen to rlogin freefall or some other known site, for the entire duration we're connected to the internet, we never know which friends & aquaintainces are reachable. When I used to have a fixed personal IP number, I used to have a URL on my web home page on freefall, that folk could at least try, at times when they might guess me to be on line (after 9 PM these days, as I'm a victim of Deutsche Telekom's doubled 1996 local charge rates) The Tentative Solution: Perhaps all interested freefall users should conform to a standard of using a filename something like (in my case, though it doesnt exist yet) http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/forward_ip.asc which would simply a contain a field such as 139.92.42.182 or maybe http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/forward_ip.html with content http://139.92.42.182/~my_name_on_my_host & Then comes the question of how it be updated automatically ? One might config the web daemon to enable `Put' operations on files called ~name/forward_ip.asc &/or ~name/forward_ip.html and then have one's dialup IP init script call call something like (maybe) lynx http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/put_ip\ ?~jhs/forward_ip.asc\ ?ip=139.92.42.182\ ?who=~my_name_on_my_host\ ?time="Mon Jan 8 16:19:21 MEZ 1996" & which data could be formatted & deposited by cgi/put_ip in ~jhs/forward_ip.asc for use by browsers & rwho like tools. - Is there an easier way ? How ? ( Could one avoid Web complexities altogether & just have a ~jhs/.ip_forward ?) - Would other freefall users use it if I wrote a Web CGI script for freefall to do this ? - Would webmaster@freefall be happy to enable `Put' (a potential security hazard) to enable such a scenario (I believe freefall runs the apache web server, & I'm not familiar with its Put limitations, Ive only config'd Cern servers. - Might writing a dynamic IP rwho daemon be a little project some newcomer who's looking for work would like to take up ? (such a registration daemon could even have passwords & timeouts I suppose). Julian -- Julian H. Stacey jhs@freebsd.org http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/
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