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[iuvideo]

My company just purchased the DNS-321 for backup purposes.  After loading the new firmware everything was finally set up properly and aside from slower than would be preferred transfer speeds, it works rather nicely. 

I am now trying to set up a DDNS server so we can use our 321 as an FTP server because we have a dynamic IP.  I followed the very easy instructions on how to set up a host through dyndns.org and how to configure it on our end as well.
My problem lies in that connection, I cannot get my alias url that was assigned to me to go through to the DNS-321.  I know the answer lies in the IP address because my host is currently configured to use the IP of our Motorola router and not our DNS-321.  I cannot however add a port number at the end of my IP address to forward it.  So far after much looking I have not found anyone with this similar problem.  I am clearly missing something and would appreciate if somebody could tell me how to forward my DDNS url on to my 321.

Thanks.

[fordem]

Just a suggestion.

Break the project into smaller parts and make sure each of the basic blocks works before trying to make the whole thing work.

You can test the DDNS functionality by pinging the URL, even if the ping fails, it should report the ip address it was trying to ping and that should match the WAN address shown in your router's status page or at http://whatismyipaddress.com

If the URL does not resolve to the correct ip address or is reported as an unknown address, then you need to fix a DDNS problem, if it does resolve correctly then your problem is not DDNS, but either port forwarding or the ftp server itself.

Let's look at the ftp server first - because that is easier and to a certain extent more logical.

First you need to have the DNS-321 at a static ip address or at the very least a reserved DHCP address, and then you need to create an ftp user, assign a share and start the ftp server - once you have done that, test it from the local network, go to any computer, open a command prompt and enter ftp local_ip_of_ DNS-321, you should see a prompt asking you to login - if you don't post with the error message and we'll take it from there - if you do, login with the username and password and do a directory listing (dir) and then disconnect (bye)

By the way - the only reason I'm using the command line ftp client is it gives nice clear error messages - you can also use your internet browser - enter ftp://local_ip_of_DNS_321 - or whatever ftp client you choose.

If you have gotten this far, we can now look at the remote access - first you have to foward the required port (21), to tell the Motorola router that when it gets a request on the port, that it routes that request to the DNS-321 - since I am not familiar with the Motorola products, I'm going to give you a link to www.portfoward.com

After you have setup the port forwarding try to connect from outside your network - if you try to test from inside the same network it may or may not work, depending on whether or not your router supports loopback. 

For this test, if you are using the command prompt, enter - ftp your_domain_name.dyndns.org - or - ftp <your_routers_public_ip_address> - and in your browser - ftp://your_domain_name.dyndns.org - or - ftp://<your_routers_public_ip_address>

Please note - the above assumes you are running your ftp server on the standard ftp port 21 - if you plan to use a non-standard port, I would suggest you set it up on port 21 first and verify functionality, as outlined above and then change to a non-standard port.  Yes, it does involve more work, and in fact, repeating several steps, but it allows you to pinpoint where the problem lies.

[iuvideo]

fordem,
Thanks for your reply.  Here's what I have.  My ftp server works fine.  I was able to set that up and forward the port no problem last week.  My problem is still the DDNS.  Maybe it's that I just don't understand it, but the way I interpreted what I read was that I could have a dynamic IP but with the alias URL it would still send me to my FTP server.

Essentially what I need to figure out is how my DDNS server knows to route directly to port 21 therefore accessing my FTP server.  The only problem is how do I do that? There is no place in my 321s DDNS settings or dyndns.org to tell it to route to myip:21.

This is my real problem but I can assure you that my FTP works fine now, I just need a way to send my alias URL to it.

[fordem]

If your ftp server is working and your port forwarding is working, then all that is left is the DDNS.  There is no need to specify a port if you are using the default port - like it says in the penultimate paragraph of my previous post - point your browser to ftp://your_domain_name.dyndns.org - or - using the command line, enter - ftp your_domain_name.dyndns.org

If that does not work then you'll need to find out why it doesn't - try reading the post - the first thing it does is tell you how to determine that your DDNS setup works correctly - and - the last thing tells you how to use that DDNS entry to access your ftp server - just skip the pieces that you already have working.

[iuvideo]

Everything was working just fine once set up.  I never realized I was supposed to put the ftp:// before my alias url.  Thanks for your assistance, I greatly appreciate it!

[fordem]

You're welcome.

The ftp:// part of the URL is how you tell the browser you're using the ftp protocol, if you look at the browser window, you'll note it usually shows http:// which says you're using the http protocol (hypertext transfer protocol) which is the default, since it's a web browser and http is the default protocol of the web.

If you were using a non-standard port, for example ftp on port 2100, you would have to specify the protocol and the port like this - ftp://your_domain_name.dyndns.org:2100 - and you can also have a web server on a non standard port http://your_domain_name.dyndns.org:8080 - in this case I'm using port 8080 and not the default 80