ActiveDNS is a dynamic DNS service for use in South Africa only. You can use ActiveDNS to access your machines that are on dynamically-assigned IP networks (like ADSL) via an activedns hostname that keeps up-to-date with the IP address assigned by your ISP.
For R10 per month you get a hostname on the domain activedns.co.za that will keep up to date with the IP address assigned by your ISP as it changes.
ActiveDNS uses the same update protocol as DynDNS. Just use "update.activedns.co.za" as the server to update to. ActiveDNS is located in Cape Town, South Africa, so it is usable by SA-Only ADSL accounts.
ActiveDNS costs R10 (incl. VAT) per host per month no matter how many times each domain updates its IP. You are billed only for hosts that updated one or more times during the calendar month (so dormant hosts are not charged for.)
Access to ActiveDNS is instant, and you will be invoiced at the end of each month if your account is over R50.
Once you have registered. you have full access to the site and you can add your hosts, and assign each with its own username and password (not to be confused with the username and password you use to log in to this website).
Any client that is compatible with the DynDNS 2 Protocol will work with ActiveDNS so long as it allows you to specify the update server (update.activedns.co.za).
Use "ddclient" - available through your package manager or from ddclient project on Sourceforge
Here is the sample configuration file for "ddclient" On Ubuntu you would find this config file in /etc/ddclient.conf:
# /etc/ddclient.conf
pid=/var/run/ddclient.pid
protocol=dyndns2
use=if, if=ppp0
server=update.activedns.co.za
login=[YOUR DYNAMIC DNS USERNAME]
password=[YOUR DYNAMIC DNS PASSWORD]
[YOUR HOSTNAME]
"Inadyn".
Your ADSL router may have a built-in client - however unfortunately many of these only allow you to choose from a list of hard-coded providers. Please appeal to the manufacturers to allow for entry of any update service. If you are not able to enter update.activedns.co.za as the Dynamic DNS service, you will have to use a software client.
On Windows, try our Windows Updater. Active DNS Updater (old version 2012)
Use Inadyn. We've tested it on Ubuntu with the following parameters:
inadyn -u mytest -p mytest -a mytest.activedns.co.za --dyndns_server_name update.activedns.co.za --dyndns_server_url /update/nic/update?
Perform a lookup on the special hostname test.activedns.co.za to check when last our system health checks passed (should always be in the last 5 minutes). It will return the date and time disguised as an IP address. The following example returns 7.16.10.25 which means July 16th, 10:25am.
$ dig test.activedns.co.za
; <<>> DiG 9.11.5-P1-1ubuntu2.5-Ubuntu <<>> test.activedns.co.za
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 29120
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;test.activedns.co.za. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
test.activedns.co.za. 30 IN A 7.16.10.25
;; Query time: 1340 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53)
;; WHEN: Tue Jul 16 10:29:50 SAST 2019
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 65