Introduction

Wan2Web is a IP publishing app.  It runs as a SysTray utility that queries a external site for your WAN IP address (The address everyone on the Internet sees you as).  It then publishes this information to a FTP site that you predefine to a file name that you can also define.

The one requirement here is that you must have a FTP server (or website that supports FTP transfers) to publish the information to.  As I have this website, this is where I publish my IP address to.  You will need to get your own.

It's Windows-based, open source (GNU), and solely written, maintained, hosted, and supported by me, Sean Shrum. Source code is written with AutoIT (.au3) and the most recent version can be found via the source link in the navbar above.  If you're just looking for the latest binary build, it can be downloaded from the binary link in the navbar above.

Background

WAN2WEB really came about when I wanted to VNC into my home PC from work but every time I got to work, my home WAN IP would change (being behind a dynamic broadband connection).  I had no way of knowing what the new IP was.  Working with web servers a bit, I knew that I could pull the WAN IP of a visitor with REMOTE_ADDR.  I wrote a small script (included with the distribution) called remote_addr.php.  This script returns back only the IP address of the remote visitor...their current WAN IP.  The resultant page back contains something like this:

I really got going on this project after DynDNS (one of the DDNS services that most routers give you the option of using) decided to constantly email account deletion notification to any account that didn't do any updates within 30 days.  Unless your ISP changes your IP address daily/weekly, chances are the only time your IP will change is if you unplug/reboot your modem...I'm one of those people.

In order to get around the issue, I set up this tool to get my WAN IP by going to http://www.shrum.net/remote_addr.php that I then publish to my website to a filename that only I know.  Whenever I want to log into my home PC I look at that file on my site and my home connection current IP address is right there.

Usage

Simply launch Wan2Web.  First time runs will display 7 prompt and save your responses for future use (except for password).  You will be prompted for the following information:

• [W]AN
  ...the site that you want to pull your WAN IP from (defaults to my remote_addr.php, you can use any other site as long as the only value returned is the WAN IP address)
• [S]erver
  ...the address to the FTP site to post updates to
• [U]sername
  ...the FTP username to use to log into the ftp server with
• [P]assword
  ...the password to log into the server (must be input if app is launched directly versus via a commandline with all the parameters passed)
• [F]ilename
  ...the path/filename to store the updated info to
• [M]inutes
  ...how often to check for IP changes (defaults to 30)
• [V]erbose
  ...toggle bubbletips on/off

Wan2Web does not store passwords and you'll be required to input your FTP account password every time Wan2Web is launched.  This is just a security precaution.  If you really want to, you can either call the utility from the command line and include the password in the call or mod the script to include it like this

    wan2web.exe w=http://www.shrum.net/remote_addr.php s=ftp.shrum.net u=foo p=bar f=public_html/homeip.txt m=60 v=y

Or you can add a "Password" string key to the registry under HKCU\software\shrum.net\wan2web.

Whenever a IP change is detected, Wan2Web will generate 2 files.  [filename].txt and [filename].html. the .txt file will include the WAN IP address "@" and the time of the post like this:

76.170.192.233 @ 2025/11/12 23:28:57

The .html file will be a redirect page that will point to the WAN IP address that you can call when remote.