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TweakDUN Clone


Disclaimer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have prepared to help you is right here.

This project outline is not like the artificial, tidy little problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer by profession, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavour.

Please do not email me about this project without reading the disclaimer above.

TweakDUN was a utility that looked at your hosts. file.

It refreshed the IP (Internet Protocol) in it by looking them up via DNS (Domain Name Service). Your clone ensures that the entries for the IP in your quick DNS look-up hosts. file are accurate. A hosts. file might look something like this:

IP domain comment
173.194.33.32 apis.google.com
173.194.33.47 google.ca
173.194.33.40 google.com
65.110.21.43 mindprod.com #LEAVE
173.194.33.57 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
208.76.175.8 publisher.appvisor.com
104.20.3.47 statcounter.com
173.194.33.41 translate.google.com
159.33.3.85 www.cbc.ca
206.132.244.95 www.dogpile.com
198.3.98.99 www.excite.com
209.185.151.128 www.hotbot.com
71.170.105.52 www.htmlvalidator.com
72.21.215.52 www.imbd.com
198.41.0.8 www.lycos.com
209.224.233.192 www.networksolutions.com
23.6.98.234 www.paypal.com

You should skip updating any entries marked with #LEAVE: Unlike the real TweakDUN, your clone should not behave like a bull in a china shop and remove any comments or comment lines — or text to the right of a #. Your utility may be written in Java but only has application on Windows. There may be equivalent files on other operating systems. You might tidy the file so that all the domain names line up nicely. One simple way to do that is to put lead zeros on each field of the IP address to pad them out to 3, though most people would probably prefer you not do that.

Alphabetising would probably annoy more people than it would please.

If you update any of the IPs, you you don’t have to reboot to make the changes take effect.

What might you call this new program? freshhosts, autohosts, accuhost. I wrote one myself and called it QuickDNS.

hosts.
QuickDNS download
QuickDNS manual

This page is posted
on the web at:

http://mindprod.com/project/tweakdun.html

Optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

J:\mindprod\project\tweakdun.html
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