Many Hudson clients try to access their office servers from remote locations such as Airport booth operations or Cruise Terminal kiosks. The challenge is that the office server, when connected to the Interent and assigned an Internet Protocol (IP) address, is subject to having the IP address changed by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) unless you have been granted a Static (permanent) IP Address. How often the IP address changes is determined by the ISP, but the more often the machine is restarted, the more often it is likely to see a change in the assigned IP address.

When connecting to your server or network from a remote location, you need to know the specific IP address that is assigned to the server or modem. There is a simple and no-cost solution to this problem and it is offered by a company named DynDNS. There are other similar services offered online, but this one will be highlighted as one representative of this type of service. This is a free Dynamic Domain Naming Service "that allows you to alias a dynamic (changeable) IP address to a static hostname in any of the many domains they offer, allowing your computer to be more easily accessed from various locations on the internet. 'They' provide this service, for up to five (5) hostnames, free to the Internet community."

This means that your remote locations, rather than having to know and enter the current IP address when connecting to your server, (such as 58.75.157.65), they simply enter the DNS alias that you have selected (such as acmelimo.dnsalias.com) and the DynDNS service will always point the user to your current IP address, whatever it happens to be at that time. In simpler terms, DynDNS watches your IP address as it changes so that you don't have to. You simply remember the alias you selected and enter that when trying to connect to your office network via the Internet.

To setup a free DNS alias:

1. Open your web browser and go to: https://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/
2. Locate the section named MORE INFO and click on the HOW TO link.
3. In the first sentence on this page, click the account link and follow the steps to create a new account (username, password, email address etc.),
4. You will very quickly receive an email confirmation of the account setup. To complete the setup, you must click on a link in the email and return to the DynDNS site and login to your new account.
   
5.  Go to the Services Page, Dynamic DNS, Then Add DNS HOST.
6. On the New Dynamic DNS Host form:
1. HOSTNAME: Enter a name here for your dns alias (ex: acelino)
2. Then select the alias 'domain' from the drop down list to the right (ex: dnsalias.com)
3. IP ADDRESS: Enter your external or public IP address (if not already populated here)
4. Click the Add Host button to save.

Your new dns alias is now established (ex: acmelimo.dnsalias.com). It can take a few minutes to several hours for your new alias to be pushed out to the Internet, or it may work immediately. To test it, open a command prompt on your workstation and then type: ping <name.domain.ext>, but replacing this with the name you just registered (ex: ping acmelimo.dnsalias.com). If the name has been published to the internet, you will see something like:

Pinging acmelimo.dnsalias.com [##.##.###.###] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from ##.##.###.###: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=64

The #' symbols above will be replaced with your server's current IP address. You can now use your new alias with Terminal Services, Remote Desktop Connection and other applications, to access your server or network. Instead of entering the IP address as done previously, you would now enter your new alias: ex: acmelimo.dnsalias.com. The DynDNS service will re-direct your connection request to your network/server.

Now that your account is established, you will receive an email reminder every 30 days to login to the DynDNS website and manually update your IP address. Once the email reminder arrives, you have 5 days to do the update, before the alias you created will expire and will no longer work.

Instead of updating manually every 30 days, you can also download and install a third-party automatic updater tool that checks your computer periodically for IP address changes, and then automatically updates the DynDNS website with the change. To download one of these free third party tools, go to: https://www.dyndns.com/support/clients/.