Welcome to Just Ask Matt! Today, Tex writes:

The question that I have is: How can one determine the Host IP Address when it changes from a remote PC? I perform maintenance on computers for my clients and I use Symantec pcAnywhere to connect to their computers from my home. This works great, but every now and then the Host IP Address changes. Is there a way to find out what the new IP Address is without a person actually at the Host computer running “ipconfig /all” or going to a Web site like “http://www.ipaddressworld.com/” to get the new IP Address? Many times when I am doing the maintenance, there is no one home and I prefer to do maintenance when the client’s computer is not busy. Please provide any solutions that may work. Thanks!

One of the pains of having dynamic IP addresses is that it can make using clients such as VNC or, as you said, pcAnywhere, very difficult. One solution I would suggest is to look at adding NoIP to their machine with a hand crafted URL that NoIP can help you to create. Yes, this is FAR from an ideal solution. It means that you are trying to run ‘one more program’ on their computer, which can be annoying.

Having said this, if they have a router such as a Dlink or a Netgear for instance, oftentimes you can set it to check for IP address updates with DynamicDNS once an account has been created. These guys are great. You can use your router in place of having to settle on a software option for the freely provided domain update services. Hope this helps!

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