Dynamic DNS (DDNS) recommendations?

Tech Support
1

Which Dynamic DNS (DDNS) service do you use/recommend?

I would actually be fine with updating a record for my domain name (via a script running on my router), but it’s registered at Hover and they don’t offer an (official) API that can do this…

(I’m currently using the free ASUS service that they offer with their routers, but it’s a bit flakey now and then)

2

I’ve used DynDNS for many years. Worked flawlessly. And it has broad support. But since my hosting company offered an API to their DNS servers, I created my own client and use their DNS (that I was already using for other domains).

3

Free? For over two decades I think the one consumer choice I’d always hear recommended was DynDNS, and that was the site I’d always had bookmarked if I needed a DNS service at home (but I never did). In recent years I’ve heard about afraid.org and Dynu.

4

Yes, preferably free.

BTW: my ISP’s IP has been so stable that I might just put a record with that IP address at Hover?

5

I’ve used DuckDNS for a long period of time and it works well. However, at home, I have this as a backup and instead rely on the Synology one thanks to my NAS.

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6

You could do that. If you can live without the connection if you’re away from home, it’s the cheapest option. You should monitor your external ip address in that case though.

If you’re using Hover, what about this? Probably won’t run on your router, and apparently based on an unofficial API, but it’s an option.

7

I have seen that and even experimented with a similar shell script in the past.

On top of being unofficial I had to disable 2FA to get it to work, so I’d rather not use it.

I think I’m going to experiment with this:

  • IP hardcoded in an “A” DNS record on Hover
  • Push notification from router when IP address changes (if I can write such a script)
  • Keep using the ASUS DDNS and/or use a third-party one (both as “backup”)

My router’s third-party firmware uses inadyn, which lists a lot of DDNS services:

8

Thought you might be interested in the blog post, Keeping Up With IP Number Changes from Dr Drang.

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9

I think DynDNS either stopped offering free DNS a few years ago or they made it so hard to use that it was no longer useful.

I switched to EasyDNS back in wow, 2012, according to my account there.

In 2014 I paid $160 for 10 years of DNS service. Looking at their site now, I’m not even sure they offer that sort of service any more. Everything seems a lot pricier, but it might be that “Just DNS” is not a big enough thing to advertise.

Their service has been rock solid and the few times I’ve needed to contact support, they’ve been excellent.

10

I use noip.com. I generally find that routers include noip in the list of preconfigured ddns services. If not, they have an app that can run on a PC or Mac.

11

Looks like this simple command is sufficient to get the current IP address on my router:

nvram get wan_ipaddr

But I like how @drdrang gets the registered IP address:

> dig +short my.domain.com @dns1.nextdns.io

Way cleaner than what I planned to do:

> nslookup my.domain.com dns1.nextdns.io | tail -1 | cut -d" " -f3

Thanks!

1 Like
12

I think this script might work for “Push notification from router when IP address changes”:

#!/bin/sh

notify() {
    curl -s \
    --form-string "token=..." \
    --form-string "user=..." \
    --form-string "title=Router" \
    --form-string "message=New IP: $1" \
    --form-string "sound=siren" \
    --form-string "priority=1" \
    https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json
}

wan_ip=$(nvram get wan0_ipaddr)
dns_ip=$(dig +short my.domain.com @dns1.nextdns.io)

if [ "$wan_ip" != "$dns_ip" ]
then
    notify "$wan_ip"
    inadyn -1
fi

(I’ll use cru to run it every x minutes)

13

FWIW, I have a couple of sites that might be useful for folks trying to do this sort of thing:

http://ip.luo.ma or https://ip.luo.ma will show your (external) IP.

http://hostname.luo.ma or https://hostname.luo.ma will show your external hostname and your IP (if you are using curl note that the hostname is the first line, then there is a <br> as the second line, and the IP is the third line)

I was tired of trying to remember what the sites were that were good for this and not cluttered with ads, so I just put together the simplest option I could.

http://time.luo.ma or https://time.luo.ma will show you the current time, first in Unix time, and then in US/Eastern (which, as we all know, is the “One True Time Zone”). For example, as I write this, it is currently:

1595991986 
Tuesday, 28 July 2020 at 11:06:26 PM EDT

I use the time site as a quick check if I need to make sure that I’m online. Years ago I used to pull up Google but there are some portals which capture/cache Google, but no one has my little site on their radar, so it’s a good reliable way to make sure I’m online.

I have most of my sites now redirecting the http to https but I left these with both because sometimes it can be helpful to know if http is working and https is not.

Oh, and I almost forgot there is also:

http://ua.luo.ma and https://ua.luo.ma which will just show you the User Agent that your browser is reporting.

All of these are as quick and simple as possible. No ads, no JavaScript, nothing except the least amount of text possible to give the information that you want.

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14

That’s what I did too. And it suits my ‘policy’ of self-hosting as many services I need as possible