FQDN in YSFHosts.txt instead of IP address

[W0YGH]

I host YSF reflector XLX458. My ISP (Google Fiber) will not provide static IP addresses to residential customers. When Google changes my IP address, my users lose access until they manually update their host files, or they get automatically updated. I use a dynamic DNS service to keep my FQDN pointing at whatever IP address Google dishes out, and have registered my YSF reflector at ysfreflector.de with the FQDN address. The YSFHosts.txt file that I find on my PI-Star device has an IP address, not the FQDN.

In researching this, I found that ysfreflector.de will "pre-resolve" all FQDNs to IPs by default in the downloaded CSV file. I verified that this is the case. Digging deeper I found that if you append '?noresolve=1' to the curl or wget command that fetches the file from ysfreflectors.de, the FQDNs will be sent, and not pre-resolved. The file with FQDNs is about 4k larger than the pre-resolved one, so it's not a large storage hit. I believe this change would be a big win for every reflector owner who doesn't have the luxury of a static IP.

My reflectors is XLX458. The ysfreflector.de registration page shows my proper FQDN: xxlx.w0fh.net.

This is what I get with the command *wget -O YSFHosts.txt https://register.ysfreflector.de/export_csv.php*
28054;XLX458;KansasCityWide;136.33.113.113;42000;125;http://xxlx.w0fh.net:51080;0

This is what I get with the command *wget -O YSFHosts.txt https://register.ysfreflector.de/export ... oresolve=1*
28054;XLX458;KansasCityWide;xxlx.w0fh.net;42000;132;http://xxlx.w0fh.net:51080;0

The fourth field is the key here.

Thanks for considering this! Rick W0FH

[MW0MWZ]

Wish granted - the move to DVRef allows for hostnames now - but I can't stress enough that this is a bad idea.