vmplace.eu — Magic DNS: resolve every IP, with a valid SSL certificate

DNS

vmplace.eu provides a magic DNS, available publicly, that resolves every IPv4 address in the vmplace.eu zone. For example:

10-0-0-1.vmplace.eu       resolves to    10.0.0.1
11-1-0-1.vmplace.eu       resolves to    11.1.0.1
192-168-1-1.vmplace.eu    resolves to    192.168.1.1
8-8-8-8.vmplace.eu        resolves to    8.8.8.8

...and so on for any valid IPv4 address.

SSL

You can also obtain a valid wildcard certificate with its private key for *.vmplace.eu. Install the certificate and key on your server, point your web server configuration to it, and restart the service. After that, browsing your server via a-b-c-d.vmplace.eu over HTTPS (e.g. https://8-8-8-8.vmplace.eu) gives you a fully valid, trusted SSL connection (green lock) in a matter of seconds.

What is this for?

You can use this service for testing purposes, especially for:

Reaching any host (including non-public hosts) via a valid FQDN with a trusted certificate on your local network without configuring DNS — useful when developing apps for iPhones, iPads, etc.
Providing a secure connection to a test application deployed on a private IP address, e.g. behind NAT.
Configuring a test installation of Microsoft Exchange or a Skype for Business / Microsoft 365 hybrid setup, where a publicly valid certificate is required.
Teaching courses on development, Public Key Infrastructure, and similar topics.

How it works

This project is a modern remake of an older service that stopped working. It is built on:

PowerDNS authoritative server + recursor with a custom "pipe" backend, running on Ubuntu, that resolves every a-b-c-d.vmplace.eu name on the fly.
Two independent, redundant servers — ns1.vmplace.eu (primary) and ns2.vmplace.eu (secondary) — both compute every answer on demand, so there is nothing to replicate between them.
Queries that do not match the magic IP pattern (for example www.vmplace.eu) are transparently forwarded as A-record lookups to the domain's externally managed name servers: ns1.ogicom.pl, ns2.ogicom.pl, ns3.ogicom.pl.
Infrastructure provisioning and software deployment are fully automated with GitHub Actions.

Source code

The full source, deployment scripts and GitHub Actions workflows are available at github.com/MariuszFerdyn/MagicDNSResolveEveryIPwithCert.