"Jamie Dale" <j.dale@turboz.net> wrote in message
news:448569ec@newsgroups.borland.com...
> To be honest, when you first asked about network adapters,
> I took it as you said it - Network - IE my Lan lol.
That is exactly what I meant. A computer can have multiple ethernet cards
installed, each one connected to a different network, each one with its own
IP address for its respective network. Access to the Internet can come from
any of those networks. A computer is not required to be connected directly
to the Internet modem in order to access the Internet. It could be getting
its connection through another machine on a network, or from a proxy/router
that is shared by multiple machines.
> I didn't at first realise you meant multiple internet connections
That is not what I meant.
> Yes but supposing something went wrong with Bind, or the script
> suffered a database error - Are you suggesting that they break the
> HTTP protocol, and send a 404 error saying page not found?
They wouldn't be breaking the protocol. If a request fails, they are
SUPPOSED to be sending a non-200 reply code. That is part of the HTTP
protocol specifications. They don't have to, nor should they, be sending
back a 404 reply for a database error. It should be 500 instead, or any
number of other possible values. And that doesn't prevent them from sending
error HTML back, either. They can still do that, but just looking at the
reply code goes a long way to simplify your parsing. The HTML is usually
meant only for the user to view, while the reply code and reply text are for
applications to use.
> I agree that a code 200 would be useful, however how would they
> handle errors AND describe the problem in the response?
By sending an error reply code, such as 500, as per the HTTP specs. Every
response, whether 200 or otherwise, has a 1-line text string associated with
the reply code. Applications can use that text line along with the reply
code as needed. For example:
200 OK
500 Database error
etc...
Any HTML that is sent along with the reply code and reply text is generally
for humans, not applications, to use. Sure, there are exceptions to that
rule, but it is generally the case.
> I must confess, no-ip.com have a nice protocol to use
So does dyndns.com (which is what I use). That protocol is tightly
structured to make application processing very straight-forward. If an
error occurs, there are rules defined to handle it. You can view the
protocol here: http://www.dyndns.com/developers/specs/
> you have to pay to use a TLD..
You always have to pay to use a TLD, regardless of the service. That is why
dynamic DNS services always provide free services through subdomains, since
they are already paying for their own TLDs.
> Well there doesn't seem to be any standard protocol for
> dynamic dns service hosts.
No. But HTTP itself is standardized. The syntax used for reply codes is
standardized for all kinds of possible response conditions. FreeDNS should
be following the standards like everyone else is.
Gambit
