I have been using no-ip.com for my DNS redirection for many years. It basically maps the my domains (www.horace.org and trishama.no-ip.com) to the IP address of my webserver at home. It is a free service and very reliable. I don’t expect my free account will actually expired. This unexpected link failure disturbed the service to my website for a few hours today, until I figure out the problem. I know there is no forever free lunch. It seems the no-ip service require the user reactive their accounts once a while. If it becomes too much of an annoyance, I think I will pay $20 to upgrade to the enhanced service to save all the troubles. I even briefly think about moving my main domain, horace.org to no-ip.com for the $25 package. Although it is $75 cheaper than the hosting service I am using, no-ip.com doesn’t provide webspace nor mail service. It costs another $45 to add a mail server to the package, and only comes with 20MB storage space. My deal at readyhosting.com is pretty good, 500Mb of mixed use space, unlimit email account, umlimit data transfer, web email access. The only obvious drawback is SQL database not included, an extra $25 for the database is more than I am willing to pay. I think the best solution is keep everything as it is. Continue to host the website in my linux box at home, and use the static domain just as a front channel all the traffic to my home server. I am lucky to have my own toplevel domain. I noticed horace.com and horace.net is up for sale and the seller is asking for over $1000. It seems these two domain is owned by cyber squatters at the moment. Those companies accumlate common expired domains and hoping to cash them out some day. I used to know the owner of horace.com, even asked to buy his domain. I wonder whether he sold the name to those cyber squatter or he simply forgot to renew his domain register. If I knew he will give up on his domain, I may ask him again. I guess I am willing to spend up to $500 for that name. Isn’t it ironic that you have to acquire the right to use your own name in the cyberworld?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been using no-ip.com for my DNS redirection for many years. It basically maps the my domains (www.horace.org and trishama.no-ip.com) to the IP address of my webserver at home. It is a free service and very reliable. I don’t expect my free account will actually expired. This unexpected link failure disturbed the service to … Continue reading no-ip.com<\/span>