Frequently asked questions for staticcling.org
Last updated Sat Oct 8 15:24:02 PDT 2005
Got other questions, or additions?
Fire off some email to us.

• What the heck is this site all about?
• How often does the database regenerate?
• What about DNS time to live?
• Do the accounts expire after a certain amount of time?
• Why isn't my host resolving?
• Are there any specific IP updating clients for my operating system?
• Is there any kind of shortcut for updating my IP, instead of using the web page?
• Can I have more than one account?
• Are there any limitations on what I can serve from my StaticCling account?
• Do you support machines behind NAT/IPMasq?
• Is there a RSS newsfeed file somewhere?
• What kind of setup is this running on?
• Who are the people behind this?
• Hey... aren't you two those stinkymeat guys?
• Why is this free?
• I like this service, how can I help out?

StaticCling.org is a free and spiffy dynamic DNS service. Dynamic DNS is an internet service originally used mainly with dialup users, but has spread to anyone that wants a domain name for their computer, and doesn't want to spend the cash or deal with the hassle of buying their own. Unlike normal domains, dynamic DNS records are set to expire very quickly, which means that old or outdated information doesn't hang around on the net. You can update your host record as often as you like, and be reachable at yourhosthere.staticcling.org to the outside world. No one that wants to reach your computer need remember what your IP address is, including you.

There are other people out there doing this sort of thing, in homage to the late dyn.ml.org. We won't hate you if you use those others instead of us. We'll just talk badly about you behind your back and spread ugly rumors about your sex life. Your friends will point and laugh when they see you aren't using a staticcling.org domain.

Honestly, and objectively as we can be: we personally like StaticCling because we are just a couple of guys that want to give back to the internet community. We have no corporate sponsorship, and we're not raking in banner ad money. We're just doing this because we like it, and we're not planning on going away. We've kept it simple. It works. It's fun to share.

We've got it running through and updating itself every minute. It's swift while it's running, and all DNS entries are live to the rest of the world on average of 1-3 seconds after the script starts up.

That's set to 5 minutes. If you don't know what DNS time to live is, you don't need to worry about it. It simply means that in the worst case scenario, it will will take about 6 minutes total to see changes or updates you make to your host. That's time to live (waiting for your local DNS caches to expire the record) plus waiting for our database regeneration script to do it's thing.

There are two actions taken on idle accounts. The first is simply to mark it as inactive, and take it out of the zone listings. The account itself still exists, it's just not going to be reachable to the outside world. This happens after 30 days without an update. As soon as you update your record, you've got another 30 days from that point on.

The second action is to completely remove the account, and make it available for others to use. This is set to 4 months of complete inactivity. If you've lost your login because you haven't updated your host record in 4 whole months - we can't help you. It's fair play.

First of all, is your account active? Have you updated it in the last 30 days? Did you just signup? Accounts must be modified after signup in order to become active. Did you *just* update it? Problems almost always can be attributed to a DNS resolver caching the information locally. If you have waited for longer than 6 minutes, and your host isn't resolving, feel free to send us mail. Please, wait at least 6 minutes. No, not 5 and a half. Six big ones. Please don't continually update your record in a desperate and hopeless attempt to make it update on your DNS cache sooner. That just puts unneeded strain on our machine, and makes us grumpy. Just wait it out. Trust us. It'll work.

You betcha. Click here to snag 'em. If you'd like to help out with a client of your own, feel free to mail us.

Sure. Slap this in your browser address field, replacing the bold words with your information.

http://www.staticcling.org/update.html?login=yourhost&pass=yourpass&ip=127.0.0.1

Beware if you bookmark that, since your password is in plain text. Also, this alternative is only for updating your IP address. Toggling wildcards still needs to be taken care of via a normal web login. If you omit the IP address entirely, it is automatically guessed from where you are making the request from.

Or, grab a client and use it.

Yup, no problem, within the boundries of common sense. Don't just reserve names. Squatting is a form of abuse. Please use your best judgement.

Nope. We simply provide a 'pointer' to your computer. What you do with that is your business - it's your computer, after all. By the same token, we're not responsible if you are serving questionable content. If you are here because of an abuse/warez issue, you are in the wrong place. StaticCling domain names are not part of the staticcling.org network - these issues need to be taken up with the provider of the IP address itself. There are some rare circumstances where we will need to step in and disable an account - for example, if you decide to spam advertising for your StaticCling domain. Even if we aren't responsible for the spam, it still makes us look bad, and we don't like that.

If you are logging in via the webpage, your real IP address should automatically be shown instead of your private NAT IP. As for the clients - any recent StaticCharge client supports NAT, which essentially just means retrieving your router IP address instead of using your private one. Please note that if you want to serve data or games from behind NAT, your NAT/IPMasq router needs to support connection redirects, and be properly configured to do so.

We don't update news very frequently - no news is good news! However, if you use a RDF/RSS compatible newsfeed, we do supply a RSS 0.91 file.

Here's the link.

StaticCling runs FreeBSD as it's OS of choice - the software used is a mishmash of open source goodies, including MySQL, Apache, Mason, djbdns, and Qmail. It's all glued together with a generous splattering of perl.

Mahlon and Chad, to start with. We find ourselves with occasional fits of boredom, and the urge to create takes over. The whole site and database backend was initially hacked together in early 2001. It took about a day and a half, amidst a haze of sleep deprivation and beer. Jon then stepped in with hardware donations and improvement suggestions. Thanks to John H. for the domain name idea. Our primary server is hosted at Spime. (If you are looking for a stable, featureful hosting provider for your business that caters to neophytes and geeks alike - check Spime out.)

Yes.

We're nice guys. :)

Send us mail, boost our already overinflated egos. Or, if you really, really want to lend a hand, make a contribution at paypal by clicking the below button.

We'll put all contributions back into hardware upgrades for StaticCling, and you'll get our eternal gratitude.