How can I work around a relay with a dynamic IP?

[CactusRadio.com]

I have one relay server with a dynamic IP. Unfortunately, at present, I have to edit the server entry in RTB every time that computer is rebooted in order to have accurate listener counts and in order for the listen.pls file that RTB generates to be up-to-date (allowing listeners to connect - the whole idea).

Today, I signed that relay up for a static domain name at DNS2Go that automatically redirects to the current value for the dynamic IP. The computer now runs that software.

I've tried entering the domain name in RTB's add server window with many varieties, but no luck. The closest I get is by setting the port to 0: "Unsupported Server! (Microsoft-IIS/5.0)", which I suspect is the redirection response RTB is receiving from the DNS2Go server. That message consistently and suspiciously alternates with "Offline (No Source!)", but I can verify that the relay is up and streaming on port 8000. If I specify the port as 8000 in RTB, then the redirection doesn't seem to respond. If I specify 0 as the port, then I suspect it is looking for the wrong port when it is redirected...ugh...

Is the capability to resolve a domain name to an IP address (through redirection) possible with RTB (or would you consider it for a future enhancement)? I think it would also have to resolve the IP address for the listen.pls file that's generated, so that the server entry in that file will work in Winamp (or other players). Or, do you have other suggestions for different domain name trickery tools or other ways to work around this? As the relay server is not my computer, I'm limited on what I can do to that machine (such as simply subscribing to a service that supplies a static IP)!

(In case you'd like to test, my relay is at http://dougjordan.dns2go.com, and my log is online, if that helps. Since you can't specify a port directly, I set the DNS2Go service to automatically redirect to port 8000 on the destination. Opening the URL http://dougjordan.dns2go.com/listen.pls into WinAmp (or a browser, for that matter) works fine. But, using that as a playlist entry, of course, does not.)

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Jay]

hmm just tried dougjordan.dns2go.com with port 8000 here in pre-beta 2 and it worked. came up and said Description Cactus Radio - live from the desert Online 0/5 listeners at 24kbps.

[CactusRadio.com]

That's great! Then, we must be close to getting this working...

However, for me RTB says "Checking..." for 15-20 seconds on that server entry and then comes back with "Not Online". I have a 272up/640down DSL connection which is working fine. (I have been streaming to that relay for 3+ hours w/o an underrun.) Is it possible it is just timing out? Is there anything you can think of that I can change on my end that might fix this?

However, it may be for nothing, since it seems WinAmp isn't smart enough to resolve http://dougjordan.dns2go.com:8000 (although if I open http://dougjordan.dns2go.com/listen.pls, it works great). The former URL (generated from RTB) just times out for me, too. Or, maybe that's the same problem?!...

Thanks again!!

[CactusRadio.com]

Jay,

Thanks for changing the RTB response to let me know that it was a duplicate entry in my RTB list that was causing the server to show as "Not Online". I had the other entry to monitor the actual IP address of the server because while I was testing before, the relay went down...so there's no way it could work... I'm sorry to see that was contributing to the problem.

I also see that on another PC in my network that WinAmp correctly resolves http://dougjordan.dns2go.com:8000 to the stream and plays it without delay. The computer that I'm sitting at must have other problems with that.

I'm sorry (if?!) I wasted your time. Thanks very much for the assistance. Perhaps someone else also has a relay with a dynamic IP and now they know they can just sign up for a free account at DNS2Go.com and make things work a lot better... Maybe this thread accomplished something...

If I can ever lend you a hand, please let me know how and I'll do my best...

Thanks again!

[CactusRadio.com]

Just in case anyone else is in this situation and tries this...

I had to disable Client-Side DNS caching in order to make sure the DNS2Go.com DNS name always resolves to the correct IP address:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... US;Q245437&

The default (at least in W2K) is to cache DNS entries for one day...which is kind of a long time to wait for the correct IP if your target server reboots...

You need to restart the DNS Client service in order for the registry change to take effect.

(This is why one of my computers couldn't get the domain name to work right in my earlier post...)

[CactusRadio.com]

Oops. I forgot to post the final outcome of my situation, in case it helps others...

It turns out that ISP caching of DNS entries comes into play. So, I could not ever get the DNS2Go domain name to reliably return the current IP. It was still often out of date by many hours, defeating the purpose.

So, I wrote a quick-and-dirty log parser of the shoutcast server log, looking for listeners of type "shoutcast server", grabbed the IP address from there, and, through a macro (yuk), updated RTB's server entry.

If anyone has better ideas, I'm interested...but this works for me for now.