Reverse DNS

I just noticed a new section on the zen portal called Reverse DNS.
seems to allow me to change my dns from default dsl-217-155-***-***.zen.co.uk. to anything i want.
Whats the good thing about doing this?

Blackmesa8

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Whats the good thing about doing this?

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Basically if you don't know why you need it then there's no need bothering about it.

It's mostly helpful if you run a mailserver from your connection, although there are other advantages.

Doesn't work anyway. It was a beta test that failed miserably.

Of course it works.

Have you actually tried using it?

Yes it does. We removed the initial version on Wednesday afternoon and the fixed version was released yesterday.

regards,
Phil.

So it is back into beta again?

Released to most people, but it's missing in my most recent ADSL orders still. So I can't check or change those. Sort of broken given if I mailed rdns.request I get told to go away and use the portal now...

Have those ordered been fulfilled yet? (activation date reached)

Yep. Orders forfilled, lines are in use.

Bear in mind BT often activate lines before the official date.

Do you know if the official date (as we supplied) has passed yet on these lines?

Um, no it doesn't. Not for me anyway. I hit an Internal Error twice when attempting to use it.

Can multiple domains/hostnames be used with this (eg: if you have more than 1 IP address, can you have ip1.domain.com ip2.domain.com ip1.somewhereelse.com ip2.somewhereelse.com) and also if I go for 8 IP addresses if (when) I sign up for Zen, can I just use 1 as a static IP address and use a NAT as I'd do normally and have done before when I was on Zen, and at a later date use the other IP's but not have to use them for direct routed IP's?

To answer your latter question, I have 8 IPs, all NAT'd. One is a general NAT rule, which any machine signing on to my lan will use (say a mate brings a laptop over). The other 7 have specific NAT mappings for other services and in effect provide a static IPs for those services.

Does that help?

Ruz

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Can multiple domains/hostnames be used with this

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Yes

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...if I go for 8 IP addresses if (when) I sign up for Zen, can I just use 1 as a static IP address and use a NAT...

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Yes, but if you can do everything with one IP and NAT why would you want eight?

Have you tried using it since it was fixed/updated?

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Yes, but if you can do everything with one IP and NAT why would you want eight?

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Good question, and so far on both Zen (when I was a customer) and PlusNet (currently) I've just got the one static IP.

But if I get the coice of 1 or 8, with a fee to be charged to change to 8 at a later date then it'd seem to make sense to me to go for 8 - as long as I can just use one of them as if I only had 1 static IP and forget about the others for the meantime.

Similar to me, I only use one at the moment but have used a /29 in the past (and probably will again) so it's a case of planning for the future!!

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But if I get the coice of 1 or 8, with a fee to be charged to change to 8 at a later date then it'd seem to make sense to me to go for 8 - as long as I can just use one of them as if I only had 1 static IP and forget about the others for the meantime.

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Seems reasonable to me. If you're pre-planning and looking to use them in the future then I'd do the same.
And just to confirm, yes you can just use one, two or three etc -- it really depends on your setup and how you use it/them.

Yep, long since.

If you have more than 1 IP address then yes, you can set up a reverse DNS entry for each IP address.

Note you can set up exactly 1 reverse DNS entry per IP address assigned, you cant set more than 1 per IP.

I'd never noticed this before (Home2000 product...never had to check usage ). It's pretty cool. I like it . I don't recall any other ISP I've been with in any other country as well as here allowing me to do this.

As of today it now shows on the portal.

I was getting an internal error last (Friday) night. Zen have now fixed this - and the portal now helpfully tells me I don't have an A record for the hostname I'm trying to set the IP to. Once I updated my DNS server A record it worked a treat.

>> Whats the good thing about doing this?

You can make vhosts for IRC......I'm sure it also has other lesser reasons like if you mail server/etc.

It can also be helpful if you want people to be able to resolve the IP when running trace routes to your server. Helpful for game servers as people can then see your website address and often come to visit.