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Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 16:42:39 +0100 (MET)
From: "Julian Stacey jhs@freebsd.org" <jhs@vector.jhs.local>
Message-Id: <199601081542.QAA02409@vector.jhs.local>
To: hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Dynamic IP Site Pointers
Reply-To: "Julian H. Stacey" <jhs@freebsd.org>
Organization: Vector Systems Ltd. (Internet Unix & C Consultants)
Address: Holz Strasse 27d, 80469 Munich, Germany
Phone: +49.89.268616
Fax: +49.89.2608126 (pending reconfig)
Web: http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/
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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/