Contents
- Download
- The Problem
- The Solution
- Installation
- Initial Setup
- Sample ExternalIP.ini File
- Running External IP
- Using External IP
- Running as a Portable Application
- File Permissions
- Creating Templates
- Best Practices
- Troubleshooting
- Uninstalling
- Future Plans
- Conclusion
Download
For those of you that are only here to download the program, here it is:
If you find External IP to be a useful program, please consider using the Tip Jar (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)!
For those of you that are interested in some of the background and description of External IP, read on.
The Problem
I received an e-mail from a DCoT reader wanting to know if I could figure out a way for him to get the external IP address of his home system/network when it changes. He has a dynamic IP address that is given out by DHCP whenever he connect to the Internet. This IP address changed from time to time and that means that he can’t access the system remotely if he doesn’t know the address.
He was also aware of some of the dynamic DNS services such as DynDNS.org but he didn’t want to use any of these services.
The Solution
I created External IP to solve this problem. External IP runs on one of your home systems and continually checks to see if your external IP address has changed. If it does, it can either update a file via FTP on the Internet or it can e-mail you the new IP address to your remote e-mail address. This way, you will know what your home IP address is at all times.
If you found this post useful, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee to show your gratitude?
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April 10th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Nice … I just had this happen to me last week (after having the same ip for about 7 months) and I couldn’t access my server from work when I needed to.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Good work, very handy! I wonder if you would consider sharing your code (sorry, don’t know if you have any policy against such)? This is a nice little piece of functionality, and I could see some other potential uses for it. Thanks.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Michael,
You are not the first person to ask about source code. I will be making an announcement about this in the near future. Please keep your eye on DCoT for further information.
Tim
April 10th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Thanks Tim,
I have been looking for a solution such as this for a bit. I sometimes have need to access files while on the road and I can’t wait to try this.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Sir, yes, Sir!
Glad to be of service, Sir! If you find it handy, feel free to use the Tip Jar, Sir!
P.S. If you haven’t guessed, I visited your blog!
Now if I only knew how to salute with an emoticon!
Tim
April 11th, 2007 at 5:08 am
I’ve used ZoneEdit and DynDNS to access my home network via registered domain names and free subdomains with great success over the years. No need to keep track of my dynamic IP address
April 25th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Great little app, very handy.
For me, though, it is ignoring the “UseMail=False” in the .ini file, and tries to contact “SMTPServer=smtp.myisp.com” anyway. FTP function works PERFECTLY.
Otherwise, thanks for a great utility, and blog!
May 6th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Good idea!
Just wanted to point out that “UseFTP=False” does not appear to bypass the FTP portion of the program - resulting in an error message (as expected since I have not changed the default FTP parameters in the configuration file.
May 6th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
It looks like there are a couple of bugs that I need to look at. Thanks, Fred and Dave. I’ll get on that as soon as I get some time.
Tim
February 8th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Hi Tim,
Do you, by chance, have something similar to use on a Linux platform?
Thanks!
Andy
April 11th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Hello\
I new to this and can not seem to get it working with gmail account does any one have a sample application
April 27th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Has a solution been found for the program not recognizing “False” for FTP and Mail settings? Hint hint nudge nudge…