[Asterisk-Users] OT: Recommendation for Dynamic DNS on Meshbox?

[Eric Wieling]

Colin Anderson wrote:

> I'm going to do a deployment of LocustWorld MeshBoxes in some of our remote
> locations. Build 90 comes with Asterisk 1.0, and our plan is to use the
> MeshBoxes as a WAP for non-Asterisk uses but also to add a 2nd NIC to deploy
> Snom's in the remote location. This works fine (was suprisingly easy to do),
> and I have the Meshbox running Asterisk and IAX'ing to our primary no
> problem. They will be on a cable ISP for the broadband that only gives
> dynamic IP's. I would like to use a Dynamic DNS service so we can address
> the boxes as foo.somewhere.com for remote managment. Does anyone have a
> recommendation of a free / non free etc for a Dynamic DNS service?
> 
> Note the Meshbox is a brutally stripped 2.4.x kernel so deploying software
> to it is a problem, dependency hell and I also don't want to mess too much
> with the base config. Ideally, a stand alone executable for the client
> update or a really really well crafted shell script. I can get wget and cron
> running on it so I am considering writing a web service that sits on our
> primary end and cron can call wget and POST the output of IFCONFIG; the web
> service can parse out the dynamic IP from the IFCONFIG output. 
> 
> Another possibility is to grab the IP from the wiana.org registry;
> unfortunately they don't have a web service for it so it would involve a
> script that parses out the IP from the HTML, but that would break if wiana
> decides to change the HTML or if wiana discontinues operations. 

Asterisk is VERY bad at dealing with DNS.  Even a transient problem 
will break Asterisk.  Specifically, have hosts, rather than IP 
addresses, in sip.conf, iax.conf, etc.  Then start Asterisk with no 
DNS available.  Just power off your NAT box.  After Asterisk has 
started, turn your NAT router back on.  Let the fun begin.

I don't know of this has been fixed in CVS-HEAD or not.

--Eric

-- 
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain