Let's say my computer name is "MY_PC". It will be "MY_PC" no matter which LAN I am currently connected to. So at home or at some open wirless access point, my computer name will be the same, right?
How does this come into play with DNS? The way I understand it, my computer's FQDN is used for DNS lookup. How does this work exactly?
When I connect my PC to a network, my PC sends its computer name to the nearest DNS server (usually the router, I guess) and is added to its DNS table?
I guess what I am asking is: What role does my computer's name play in my everyday internet activities. I was a little suprised to find out, it is the same in any network, but when is my computer's name actually used? Why does it have to be the same in any network?
Your computer name has little to do with DNS unless it is joined to a domain. Even then the computer name is not a DNS entry.
A FQDN is something like www. google. com:
Each period represents a subgrouping
www - is the world wide web group #
google - this is the company owning that group which belongs to
com - this is the entire group of companies in the united states with registered web addresses
The point of a DNS is to allow you to remember logical word groups instead of IP addresses (ie. it is easier to remember www.google.com, instead of 172.217.9.132).
Even on a company/private network the same is true, a DNS is used to allow a central administrator to assign names to certain network addresses.
When you assign your computer name it is similar but it not a DNS entry, as it is not administered on a centralized computer(s).
So if no one on your network, or outside of your network, need to easily remember where to find your computer (for some service) then you do not need a DNS entry.
This is just a basic version of why we use DNS. Other benefits include Disaster Recovery, ease of system migration and ease of building nested systems. Let me know if you would like me to elaborate further on this answer to accept it.
Related
Does it make a difference in performance at which domain name registrar I register a domain?
As an example, DigitalOcean does not offer a domain registration but what does this comparison at https://www.dnsperf.com/ show?
You are mixing completely different things.
You have at least the following roles:
a domain name registrar, connecting to domain name registries to provision domain names, and at least maintain a whois server, besides its web interface (and optional API) to let clients act on their domain names
a DNS provider, allowing any domain to use its nameservers and providing clients ways (website, API) to change the records served in their zone by the provider nameserver
a webhosting company, providing webservers for clients to server their content (dynamic or static)
(and you can have even more of them, but unrelated, like CDN provider, X.509 certificates seller, domain name marketplace, etc.)
You seem to mix at least the first two points.
It is difficult to define the "performance" of a pure domain name registrar. You come to it to buy a domain name, and that is all. How its website and whois server works have no operational consequences on your domain name, and you may need to come again to its website only if you need to do some changes, like on contacts and nameservers, but maybe nothing at all, and just one year after creation come again to renew the domain (or even not that if you already bought it for like 10 years like it is possible in gTLDs). You can always judge its customer service I guess, but that will be highly subjective.
On the other hand, a DNS provider has to provide a constant service as its nameservers must reply properly at all time for your domain name. So you can assess their availability worldwide, their time to reply, the time it takes to see them updated after a change you made in the zone (and how you provision the zone), how they react under a DDOS for your domain or for other domains they make host but which could impact you as well, etc.
So
Does it make a difference in performance at which domain name registrar I register a domain?
Probably no, but, replace domain name registrar by DNS provider and then the answer is probably yes.
I have used a windows command to find this
nslookup myip.opendns.com resolver1.opendns.com
and gives me an IP but if I run the same command in other pc which is in the same subnet will also give the same IP. There is no difference in both's IP.
This is same when I search in the browser as What is my IP?
Now How can I know My external IP address of my windows system? However I got internal IP from the command ipconfig which is not usefull now.
Internal IP:
A local Area Network Address provided by your DHCP server/ Router.
External IP:
A Wide Area Network address provided by your ISP(Internet service provider).
Internal IP/ LAN Address, can only be accessed within the same network. Think of babies and a mother in a house. Babies talk to each other and to their mom but don't know anything about outside. If they want any outside information, they ask their mother and mother translates the outside information to them.(NAT Translation)
Similarly, no one from outside can reach to the babies. The mother will protect her babies from anyone and everyone except she knows someone and she trusts someone what their intention is. (Port forwarding)
In your case, it is normal that both PC (babies) in the same LAN network have same external IP (Mother's name/IP). If you would like to reach to a specific baby from outside, you must ask the mom and configure the mom (Your gateway router) to permit this action.
usually default gateways in a home setup are 192.168.1.1 / 192.168.2.1 You will find this information using ipconfig
In Addition,
babies within the same household do not require mothers permission to talk to each other. They can freely communicate. However if wish to play hide-and-seek, then they need their mother's permission (UPNP settings). Where mother reveals information about one child to another.
According to https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/, the region/zone "asia-northeast1-a/b/c/" should suppose to be in Tokyo, Japan. But once I came up with the virtual machine with that zone/region, an IP trace/lookup website such as http://www.ip-tracker.org/locator/ip-lookup.php would say the VM is still in California where Google is. I meant to have the VM set up as a proxy (server) so that the VM appears to be in Japan to be able to browse content restricted to Japan. Am I misunderstanding the region/zone here? Thanks!
Many external Geo IP services solely depend on SWIP database/ WHOIS entry. Almost all Google IP addresses are SWIP’ed to Mountain View, California. Both of these do not reflect anything about the physical location of the machine answering packets to an IP address nor the decisions on how packets are routed to the destination.
Rest assured, although the IPs seem to be US based; the VM instances will be running in the geographical zone you selected. It is a common practice to remap a block of IPs from one location to another, especially given the elasticity of IP addresses for the Google Cloud Platform. You can learn more about the different regions and zones from this article.
This blog post ("How to Easily Watch Netflix and Hulu From Anywhere in the World") explains how someone outside the US can watch Netflix and Hulu - which are typically restricted to people living inside the United States - by changing their DNS servers.
My question is, how can this change how Hulu sees your location?
From what I understand, a DNS server simply translates a web address into an IP address for you. However, at the end of the day, it's still your computer connecting to the website, let's say Hulu. Hulu still knows that my computer is not in the US. Hulu doesn't know how I got it's address (i.e. they don't care which DNS server told me)
Instructions (reproduced from HowToGeek)
Press the Win + R keyboard combination, then type ncpa.cpl into the run box and hit enter.
Then right-click on your current network adapter and choose properties from the context menu.
When the properties dialog opens, scroll down and choose Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), then click the properties button.
Then change your DNS Settings to the following IP’s:
Preferred DNS: 149.154.158.186
Alternate DNS: 199.167.30.144
The only thing you have to know here is that these are tunlr DNS service IPs. The trick here is to route all the trafic through tunlr which enables you to use virtual locations instead of more traditional VPNs or proxies.
From their FAQ :
Tunlr does not provide a virtual private network (VPN). Tunlr is a DNS (domain name system) unblocking service. We’re using sophisticated technologies (a.k.a. the Tunlr Secret Sauce ©) to re-adress certain data envelopes, tricking the receiver into thinking the envelope originated from within the U.S. For these data envelopes, Tunlr is transparently creating a network tunnel from your location to our U.S.-based servers. Any data that’s not directly related to the video or music content providers which Tunlr supports is not only left untouched, it’s also not even routed through Tunlr. In order to use Tunlr, you will have to change the DNS address. See Get started for more information.
For more information, you can refer either to the FAQ/How it works section or to this discussion on SuperUser.
I have been search for a host that has static/fixed ip address. Right now i use mediatemple's grid server and because it is a shared environment the ip address is dynamic and changes randomly.
My issue is that i have a script on my sever that fetches data from an ftp site. To access the data via ftp, i have to authenticate using an ip address, username and password. Because the ip address is ever changing, i cannot access the data.
One alternative was asking the data company if they would accept a range of ip address or a wildcard but they will not. they will only approve one ip address for download.
The other option was to purchase a self managed server. I do not want to manage my own server nor do i have the expertise to do so. So I need a solution like a shared environment (low cost) with a cpanel but one that has fixed ip address.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
You should look for "managed server" or "VPS" solutions.
Which host you choose is up to you. Many hosts offer such solutions, and a smaller host might fit your budget better than a "big name" hosting company.
This is really surprising ... usually in a shared hosting account where your site is hosted on a shared IP, the shared IP address is always fixed it rarely changes. I think you're right now on CDN hosting, so your data delivery IP address varies according to your VISITOR location.
I am hosting my various sites like thewebhostingdir.com and etc at http://www.accuwebhosting.com/ ... on shared hosting and their IP address is fixed since the hosting setup.
I suggest you to change your hosting provider. You don't need VPS at this moment.
I found a solution. Godaddy vps virtual server starting at only $29.