Use Dropbox for Dynamic IP’s instead of DynDNS

February 10, 2010 | Published in Misc

Dropbox is a popular file syncing service created by students from the infamous MIT.

It’s awesome because it works well, it’s seamless and it’s easy to install. I’ve always used it to sync my work between my laptop and work computer during work terms. I had some issues with it destroying my git repositories, but git repositories are so awesome they can resurrect themselves anyway, so it was really a non-issue.

It saved my rear-end a couple of times when I accidentally overwrote files, since it versions and backs up everything. If, for example, you typed up a 500 page novel in a word document and then decided to open it, erase everything, save it and close it (temporary moment of pure madness?) then you’d be screwed. But, if you were using Dropbox, you can just select to revert to an earlier revision.

The point is, Dropbox is cool enough to be a background process that I would allow to run (the only other one being GTalk).

The issue: I needed to be able to remote desktop into my laptop from school computers (cause I don’t want to need to bring my laptop to school), but my IP changes all the time. The normal solution to this is to use a Dynamic DNS service where you can have a domain name (like ‘justinlin.kicks-ass.net’) that points to your laptop’s IP. But you’d need to constantly update the dynamic DNS cause your IP changes, and to do that you need a useless updating application running in the background.

Or not. Dropbox updates your IP too.