No-IP is proud to announce our support for the new OpenDNS service known as Dnsomatic www.dnsomatic.com. Dnsomatic provides a free and easy way for developers and hardware vendors to integrate DDNS into their products. The services provides DNS updates to No-IP and the OpenDNS service from a scalable and standardized API. Developers will be able to write their code to work with one consistent API and be able to support several of the top service providers. As Dnsomatic gains more popularity we will be integrating it tighter into our system.

Well its been a while since our last blog entry so we wanted to update everyone. We are proud to announce that on 11/27/2007 that we replaced both of the air filters in the heating units to our office. Yes it was a big deal and we are happy to say that no employees were injured during the upgrade. Also on a much less impressive note, we added two additional DNS servers to better serve our customers and increase reliability.

With 2008 around the corner we are hoping to update the blog more often. We have some big things on the way for 2008. Just to give you a hint, it begins with an “A” and ends with a “T”.

We had a good run in Vegas and met a lot of great people but it is time to escape the heat. No-IP has relocated its corporate headquarters to Reno, NV.

Our new corporate contact info is as follows.

9585 Prototype Ct Suite A
Reno, NV 89521
775-853-1883 phone
775-853-1886 fax

Plan your trip Local Radar Detailed Forecast

As part of the ongoing mail upgrades, we’ve rolled out a new version of No-IP Webmail. Adding calendars, notes, task lists, better filters, and a faster, more usable UI, the new webmail should make the mobile customers and crowd quite happy. And when you are traveling you will have a nicer mail experience! So go ahead, try it out now!

dotMobi is the first – and only – top level domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to mobile devices. dotMobi will revolutionize the use of the Internet on mobile devices. dotMobi is designed to guide mobile users to made-for-mobile Internet content and services that can be accessed with confidence.

No-IP is offering an introductory price of just $19.95 per year for domain registration or just $8.00 per year when packaged with No-IP Plus Managed DNS ($32.95 per year). The promotion runs until July 30th, 2007. Take advantage of this discounted pricing and reserve your .mobi domain for multiple years.

Advantages

• .mobi Web sites can be viewed anytime, anywhere with mobile Internet access.
• Put your business information at your customer’s fingertips — maps, directions, promotions, hours of operation, and more!
• Register a .mobi domain to prevent unauthorized use of your trademarks, brands and licensed names.
• Complement your .com, .net, and .org domain names to broaden your reach.
• More people in the world have an Internet-ready mobile device than have a PC with Internet access.
• A .mobi name tells your customers that your Web site is mobile-friendly!
• Works just like a .com domain name.
• Follow .mobi guidelines for Web site design and creation.

Recently No-IP has disabled all dns updates from D-Link routers to our main website www.no-ip.com. Over the past 3 years No-IP has supported the ability of these routers to perform updates to our dynupdate.no-ip.com host. We also allowed updates for people that incorrectly configured their router to point at www.no-ip.com. Unfortunately, traffic from these routers constitutes 50% of the requests our website receives and actions must be taken to reduce the impact from these misconfigured routers.

If you are using a D-Link router as your update client, please verify that your “Server Address” is dynupdate.no-ip.com and NOT www.no-ip.com. Also take the time to verify you still have the correct email address for the username and correct password and are running the most recent version of firmware for your router.

Users currently performing updates through www.no-ip.com will receive a “too many updates” error response. Adding salt to the wound, older D-Link routers do not listen to response codes (hence the insane amount of traffic) so at some point in the future we may begin blocking these at the connection level.

More information on configuring your D-Link router can be found over here.

A recent batch of malware has been targeted at users of the Skype VOIP phone service. Apparently the malware made use of a No-IP host name (nsdf.no-ip.biz). No-IP received notification of this early on the 18th and promptly disabled the account and DNS host of the user that developed the malware. All logs related to this users account have been preserved and will be handed over to law enforcement for prosecution. More information regarding this story can be read at The Register and over at F-Secure and Symantec.

Please note that you should never click on suspicious links or run executables (.exe files) from unknown sources. Also, please be sure to update your virus scanning software frequently and run it often.

Earlier today ordb.org announced that it is discontinuing the Open Relay Database. The maintainers have moved on noting that blocking open relays just isn’t what it used to be. For No-IP Anti-spam Policies, this was a default list for the Aggressive, Strong, and Moderate presets. It has been removed from these as well as domains that had it as a customized selection. We are sorry to see them go, but we look forward to what new enterprises their loosed time shall beget.

The success of the Anti-spam Policies addition has been staggering. Spam and spam scores are down an almost inconceivable amount. Customer’s inboxes are cleaner and so are ours! Reflector and Backup MX users should see better relay times when they have been offline for awhile due to the smaller queues (70% smaller!). We are currently blocking over one MEEHLLIAHN spam messages per day on mail1.no-ip.com alone, and that doesn’t even include what is filtered with greylisting. This has been a win for everyone, so thanks for putting up with our dust during the transition!

As time goes on we’ll be adding more options to the policies list. To get the ball rolling we’ve added the NJABL. This is an excellent list that is used in part by the Spamhaus XBL. It provides further protection with over 115MB of IP addresses! It is now part of the default for Aggressive and Strong presets. And for those pop3 users who do not enable NJABL, we’ve added custom spam scoring against this new list. The added score should help flag any spam that makes it through the Anti-spam Policies system and aid your local filters in keeping the bad messages out of your way. So read about the NJABL and start using it!