ODS Development and Support
- a sub-site of ODS dedicated to developing and supporting!

 
Links
Home
Homepage
Clients
A look at the various clients available
Tutorials
Tutorials on how to use various things
Server Stats
Have a look at the current stats on the server
Protocol Specification
The ODS Protocol Specification for client developers
Email us
Email Scott (if you really want to ;-)
 
Download latest clients (see clients page for more info)
ODS-Client-X-0.24.dmg.gz
ez-ipupdate-3.0.11b7.tar.gz
odsclient-1.02.tar.gz
winip22.zip
Questions about Clients
What is a client?
Well, quite simply, a client is a program (or script) that can be run on your local computer to do various things to interact with the ODS server. The general purpose of these clients is to offer you an automated way of updating your static host here at ODS with your IP. Different clients can do different things.
How do these clients work?
On your end of the client, different clients often operate in different ways to do their job, but the method they use to communicate with the ODS server is the same. The client will create a connection to the server to inform it of any changes you want to make, it does this by communicating using a specially designed protocol that we have developed (this protocol specification is available for developers and anyone with a general interest). During the communication, the client will send over commands to the ODS server and the ODS server will update hosts or whatever the client has asked it to do, then the client will close the connection and your host will be updated!
What changes will the client make to my computer?
The clients that we support here at ODS will make no changes to your computer except from the obvious fact that their existence/usage will result in slight usage of your resources as all programs do. The only other slight change that Windows™ clients may apply is slight changes to the registry (addition of data) as storage for settings in the clients, this is normal for the clients
What client do I need?
Hopefully this should be relatively obvious. Depending on your OS, you may have a selection of clients:

Windows™ users:
The only client available right now is WinIP (download link on left) which should run on any Windows™ platform. For info on how to use it, check the tutorials section. For advanced users, ODS client has been known to compile and run in Windows™, you will need to compile it yourself if you wish to do this

Unix users:
There is a couple of clients available for you. Firstly, our in-house ODS client which is a basic bit of code written in C is a simple script to automatically update your IP on demand. The ODS client is known to work on BSD and Linux with no problems, compilation is required but all info on compiling is in the README file provided with it. Tutorial is in tutorial section
Also, a more complex program, Ez-IPupdate, is available which is ideal for the more advanced user. This program was designed for use with multiple different DNS providers, ODS being one of them. The help files that come with the program should be enough to get you through installation, but a tutorial is of course available in the tutorials section nevertheless

Mac OS X users:
Jason has just finished building our first Mac OS X client and it is still in beta stages but it should be an ideal start for anyone running Mac OS X. A tutorial will be available for this soon
I have another question that isn't listed here
No problem, if you think there is a question that should be listed here but isn't, email me