[GIVEAWAY] The Text Message Turns 20 Years Old Today

Did you know that the text message turned 20 years old today? On December 3, 1992, the first SMS message was sent! I am not quite sure what I would do without it!

According to Gizmodo, “in 2010 alone, the world sent over 6.1 trillion messages, or roughly 193,000 per second.”

The following 5 people are the winners of our giveaway. Please email ngoguen-text@no-ip.com. Please include your t-shirt size, mailing address, and No-IP username. Congrats!

1. Alex Copland
2. Jonathan Nahlke
3. Luca Viviani
4. Wade Thomas
5. Roger Huegi

Integrated Dynamic DNS Capabilities Becoming a Thing of the Past

Did you know that during a recent poll that we conducted, 50% of our users answered the main reason that they use No-IP Free is for remote access?

integrated dynamic DNS

But even as remote access has been on the rise, many router manufacturers are actually making it more difficult for users to take advantage of easy, free, integrated Dynamic DNS solutions. We are fighting to make Remote Access even easier by offering our Integrated Services for free to manufacturers. At No-IP, we are committed to constant improvement. Our development team is continuously innovating and updating our products to help us stay at the forefront of new technologies.

Free Dynamic DNS Providers are becoming few and far between, with No-IP remaining as one of the last truly free dynamic DNS providers.

Interested in adding No-IP as an integrated dynamic DNS provider in your device? It doesn’t have to be a daunting task, download our exclusive white paper to learn how easy we make it.

No-IP Free Dynamic DNS [VIDEO]

When the Sky is Cloudy [Data Management]

A few years ago, the word cloud mostly related to the clouds in the sky, now it immediately makes me think of Data Clouds. Although a recent study totally contradicts this saying that most people think it is run on actual clouds in the sky.  Most businesses manage their databases in the cloud, they also use the cloud as an easy way to manage data and backups. Home users use cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon Cloud Drive to easily backup pictures, music, and documents.  Although these solutions are easy and often reliable solutions, how much of your private data do you really want to entrust to big corporations? Google already knows too much about you via your search history and social media sites like Facebook make your personal information everyone’s business.

When it comes to privacy, there is a very fine line of knowing what these companies are doing with your data and whose hands are actually on it. Security breaches have been very common in the past and they aren’t going anywhere.  Sometimes it’s not the question of will someone steals your data, it’s when will they steal your data. So, why not set up your own home cloud? It is actually a lot less daunting than it sounds.

No-IP is an integrated solution in most Synology devices, which makes this integration even more seamless if you would like to easily access your home cloud remotely on a dynamic IP address. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars a year for remote cloud data management services.

The product that we recommend is the Synology NAS storage device. It hooks up to your router to easily create a home network for seamless backups. If you decide to purchase the NAS with 2 bays, you will have a fully redundant cloud if the first hard drive were to ever crash. Your data will be at the tip of your fingers, freeing your computers hard drive of unnecessary data. You can check out these tutorials for easily setting up your NAS device at home, the office, or wherever.

Have you set up your own “cloud” before? How did you do it?

Like this article? Be sure to click below to share it on Facebook and Twitter!

 

No-IP Remote Support Success Story

A few weeks ago, we had a user contact our No-IP Remote Support team. The user, Martin, was trying to configure his network so he could monitor his businesses web cameras from home.  Martin isn’t a technician, our service was recommended to him by a friend. He admitted that he wasn’t that computer savvy and that after spending hours trying to figure it out, he was ready to throw his computer out the window.

 

We quickly verified that the No-IP service we set up correctly and determined that Martin was having the same problem a majority of our user’s experience, Port Forwarding their Router.  Port Forwarding is the final and in many cases the most puzzling piece of setting up your remote access.  It is a stumbling block for many users because documentation is limited and because there are so many different router manufacturers as well as changes between firmware versions.

Even though we are not a router manufacturer, we always like to go the extra mile and do our best to help users when they get stuck.  Recently we’ve launched a pilot service that allows our Technical Support Team to remotely log into a users computer and help get our clients online.

Martin agreed to participate in the program and our Support Technician, Alex, emailed him a link to get the remote view support session initiated.

Once logged in, Alex was able to diagnose the problem almost immediately and explained that by default, IP cameras are set to “Listen” on port 80. However, port 80 connections are typically blocked by ISP’s (Internet Service Providers).  Alex set Martin’s router to forward port 8080 instead, and he also changed the default HTTP port of the camera to 8080.

After both steps were complete, Alex checked to make sure Martin’s port 8080 was open using a telnet command inside the terminal.  Success!  The port was open and his network was configured successfully without Martin having to do much more than relaxing and observe.

Martin’s patience and willingness to let our Technical Support Technician remote into his computer allowed him the freedom to monitor his business from a remote location over the Internet. The entire process was completed within 20 minutes.

Martin was ecstatic.  And now he can surreptitiously watch his business and all the shenanigans his employees get into when he is not around.

We were ecstatic too.

Just another example of the No-IP Remote Support team going the extra mile to provide bad ass customer service.

Are you having trouble with Port Forwarding? Give our awesome Technical Support Technicians a call today for help!

 

Mail Reflector and Backup MX Service [NOTICE]

Due to Hurricane Sandy and the devastation that has swept the East Coast, customers with Mail Reflector and/or Backup MX Email Services will have their emails held for 14 days, instead of the typical 7 day retention period.

We wish all of our East Coast users a fast recovery. Our thoughts go out to everyone. Stay safe.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact our support team!

Halloween Trivia![GIVEAWAY]

Halloween Trivia! The correct answers to our are:

GUI
Botnet

CONGRATS to our winners of our Halloween Giveaway! If you are one of the following poeople, please email your t-shirt size to ngoguen-halloween@no-ip.com. Please note, we are currently out of size Medium shirts. If you would like a $15 No-IP credit instead, simply request it in the email. Thanks!!

ryan
george moon
adam robertson
morgan
alex copland
richard sheasley
mox
dawn herrick
Mitchell Blommestyn
Dave Gavin

 

Hurricane Sandy vs. DNS Redundancy

As Hurricane Sandy (Frankenstorm) barrels towards the East Coast threatening tens of millions of people, promising to be the “storm of the century”, a lot of our users are wondering, what will happen to my domain? Will it be okay? Will it suffer any downtime?

Yes and NO. Although No-IP does have points of presence in Ashburn, Virginia and New Jersey, our robust network will not be affected by power outages or flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy because our network is globally redundant. All data that is hosted at these two locations is also hosted at our 9 other locations across the globe and since our network is backed by our Anycast DNS, if one of these data centers were to go down, the traffic will just be routed to the next nearest location.

Please remember  DNS is an essential part of the Internet.  If your web servers are only hosted in one location, and something happens, your entire website can be wiped out. Having DNS that is hosted in many geographically diverse locations, like ours, means that even if the unthinkable happens, your customers will still be able to reach your site.

The location of DNS servers is important in ensuring 100% uptime. We deploy name servers across the globe at geographically unique data centers using different tier 1 bandwidth providers to ensure a natural disaster or connectivity outage does not disrupt our robust DNS network. Check out No-IP Plus Managed DNS for more information.

To all of our friends and families on the east coast, we hope you find a safe place to ride out the storm with your loved ones.

 

 

[VIDEO] How to Create a Free Dynamic DNS Account

Creating  a Free Dynamic DNS account is easy!

No-IP Customer Highlight Series: BC Perigramma

Today we are starting a series highlighting some of the unique uses for the No-IP service.

BC Perigramma is an innovative Greek company that is cutting carbon emissions and providing cheaper power to thousands of people, and No-IP’s Dynamic DNS service is an important component of their Solar Park operation.

The design and implementation of 11 photovoltaic systems (PV systems) with a total power output of 1.7 MWp (roughly enough energy to power 2000 homes for a year) is no small task. The systems consist of solar panels from companies such as Suntech and Bosch, and over 150 inverters from SMA. The PV plants will prevent over 3,108 Tons of Carbon Dioxide every year.

Monitoring the parks and the thousands of sensors is another major undertaking. Up to the minute, information is crucial and allows for corrective and preventive maintenance to be performed as needed, avoiding costly outages of service.

“In every park, we place 3G cards to have information about the park’s performance,” stated Theodor Tsiolis, Mechanical Engineer- BC Perigramma.

With 3G modems in the field and No-IP updating the changing IP address, the BC Perigramma team is able to efficiently and effectively run the entire grid remotely.

No-IP is proud to be a world leader in Dynamic DNS services and we are happy to help you, whether your goal is hosting a Minecraft server or powering your city.