Perhaps I'm missing something, but what exactly is appealing about this service and/or is new and innovative? It's trivial enough to put a web interface in front of BIND or djbdns to replicate this behavior to where I'm trying to understand why this got ranked highly? I am by no means bashing the creator of this service nor the service itself - I'd just like to understand what additional value is being provided here that does not already exist?
You boot up an ec2 instance and want to give a domain name to a friend that isn't 100 characters long. How much effort does it take you setup your bind solution? Particularly if you've never setup dns before. Can I do this given that I'm not running any other servers? The popularity of dyndns should give you a sense of demand.
You say it's so trivial yet you didn't include a link to the one you just set up to prove your point :p So not quite that trivial, and that is often enough.
Quite often it is useful to be able to do something easily and quickly that you could have done before with more effort.
That's pretty interesting. Somewhat like DDNS, but not as useful?
I don't know if I want an ipq.co address, but I just realized - could I use my own DNS hosting (through slicehost, linode, whatever) to assign domain names to arbitrary IP addresses?
Like, if I own garlicgargle.com, and I have another system with a static IP, does that mean I can just assign salty.garlicgargle.com to that IP and it works fine? Sorry for the basic question, I guess I don't understand doing much with DNS beyond the common tasks.
That won't work for virtual hosted web sites, which is most web sites, because the unrecognized host name in the Host header which will hit the default host on the target web server instead of the correct virtual host, unless that web server is configured to recognize the foo.ipq.co host name.
I don't think it implies ownership, but it could certainly mislead users who are not familiar with the purpose of DNS. It's always been trivial to point one of your own domain names at someone else's IP address (or create a CNAME), but this hasn't been the source of any major abuse that I'm aware of, probably because you don't have any control over the remote resource.
Other than the servers checking host per other people's comments, this is basically just how dns works... anybody with a domain can point any subdomain or domain they own to any IP they want. I can't see any practical way around this at the dns level.
Yeah... I'd expect most people who need such service to own their own domains already.
Although if they added the "fill in my ip" button as someone else suggested, it might be useful for connecting to customer machines for debugging. Instead of "go to control panel, look for network connections, ...." etc. it would be just - go to ipq, click ok, give me the result. (also, short name might be easier to say over the phone than ip)
I've had the need on dynamically assigned IP addresses to share files with people when the file too large for email, and I didn't want to take the time to upload it to a server on a slower uplink and then have the recipient download it, taking twice as much time.
Being able to open up an Apache or Nginx server without using a confusingly long hostname (eg 127-0-0-1-dhcp.node01.someispdomain.net) which would be easy to misspell over the phone, to let someone grab whatever they needed directly from me makes this a very optimal service for such a small use.
I can see a group of people working on a webapp building a list of subdomains using this service so that a project lead can instantly see how each developer is working on a problem on their local machines.
This looks similar to Dynamic DNS service from DynDNS.com. This is useful if you would like to have a domain name for your home network, for example, but don't want to purchase a domain name and have to update the IP address whenever the ISP changes it.
The downside I see here is that some (many?) home routers support DynDNS service to automatically update your IP address with DynDNS whenever it changes. I don't know whether home routers can be configured to do the same with IPQuick service.
John works for a hosting company (the awesome Brightbox) so I suspect it's just making public one of the tools they use to assign DNS records to newly provisioned boxes.
I just used it to give an easy-to-remember name to a rackspace cloud server I spun up yesterday. This is a throw-away server I'll likely nuke within a month, but for now I will remember how to get back without needing to memorize the IP address.
I'm getting "The change you wanted was rejected. Maybe you tried to change something you didn't have access to." for every IP address I try: my current Comcast address, and the addresses of a few servers I work on. I also put in 66.220.147.22 (www.facebook.com) just to see what it would do, and got the same message. I'm leaving the optional name and e-mail fields blank.
I'm not really sure what I would use this for. It's nice to have DNS for a box at home, but those aren't usually on a static IP. If my IP is dynamic, I'd probably go with a service like DynDNS which keeps my DNS record updated as the IP address changes.
I can dig it. It's useful when tossing up a web server on a cloud host that assigns an ugly external host name and I'd rather address it by a cleaner host name.
Too simple, for me. What if I want to remove the record? Or change the record? I can't tell whether I'll be able to do it or not (I know email doesn't work yet, but is there any other way? No way to tell). If the answer, as I suspect, is that you can't then it's a simple interface because it's a tool that can only do one very limited thing really well.
[+] [-] JeremyBanks|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keefe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevefink|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|15 years ago|reply
This is the first time I've ever seen a tool/web page that has done this so simply.
It may be trivial, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do it before.
Oh, and the hacker value is very clear - if you notice there is (soon) going to be an update that will let you also update your DNS record.
It's clean, quick, and simple. Add the ability to submit updates via email, and you have a "posterous for DNS updates." :-)
[+] [-] equark|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] almost|15 years ago|reply
Quite often it is useful to be able to do something easily and quickly that you could have done before with more effort.
[+] [-] code_duck|15 years ago|reply
I don't know if I want an ipq.co address, but I just realized - could I use my own DNS hosting (through slicehost, linode, whatever) to assign domain names to arbitrary IP addresses?
Like, if I own garlicgargle.com, and I have another system with a static IP, does that mean I can just assign salty.garlicgargle.com to that IP and it works fine? Sorry for the basic question, I guess I don't understand doing much with DNS beyond the common tasks.
[+] [-] jrockway|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlrobinson|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ollysb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cfaulkingham|15 years ago|reply
It's kind of like reverse domain hijacking.
See, http://hackernews.ipq.co/
Am I missing something?
[+] [-] snorkel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qjz|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keefe|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blahhah|15 years ago|reply
Maybe y-combinator doesn't care but I think I would!
[+] [-] ra|15 years ago|reply
You could equally have registered hakernews.com and CNAME'd it
[+] [-] paraschopra|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] viraptor|15 years ago|reply
Although if they added the "fill in my ip" button as someone else suggested, it might be useful for connecting to customer machines for debugging. Instead of "go to control panel, look for network connections, ...." etc. it would be just - go to ipq, click ok, give me the result. (also, short name might be easier to say over the phone than ip)
[+] [-] uxp|15 years ago|reply
Being able to open up an Apache or Nginx server without using a confusingly long hostname (eg 127-0-0-1-dhcp.node01.someispdomain.net) which would be easy to misspell over the phone, to let someone grab whatever they needed directly from me makes this a very optimal service for such a small use.
I can see a group of people working on a webapp building a list of subdomains using this service so that a project lead can instantly see how each developer is working on a problem on their local machines.
[+] [-] sunburnt|15 years ago|reply
The downside I see here is that some (many?) home routers support DynDNS service to automatically update your IP address with DynDNS whenever it changes. I don't know whether home routers can be configured to do the same with IPQuick service.
[+] [-] rahoulb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strick|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illumin8|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gm_|15 years ago|reply
Tried it with an ISP email address, and a gmail address.
[+] [-] kree10|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jncraton|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snorkel|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karteek|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thehodge|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Goladus|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirajr|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paolomaffei|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] president|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahoulb|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paolomaffei|15 years ago|reply