Im sure this has been asked before i juat can’t find where it has been - Maybe need to work on how to search Lemmy better. But…

Id like to eventually self host some sevices that require external access. While I have IpV6 addresses my IPV4 is dynamic.

Whats the best free way to be able to point some domains/ subdomains I have to my external dynamic IP and keep it updated. Im running OpenWrt on my router. - So possibly should be posting there.

Free Dyndns services seem to be a bit crap. Do I need to pay for a VPS? (seems to defeat the point of self hosting)

  • @MehBlahEnglish
    12•1 month ago

    I use afraid.org to keep my dynamic dns pointed at my routers ip. With afraid.org dns you only need a curl statement scheduled on the opendnswrt router to keep the dynamic ip updated.

    • lemmyvoreEnglish
      1•1 month ago

      Afraid.org gives you subdomains on other people’s domains, who can decide to stop letting you use them at any moment.

      • @MehBlahEnglish
        1•1 month ago

        Yeah, you don’t have to share yours if you don’t want to.

        • lemmyvoreEnglish
          1•1 month ago

          I was assuming that you don’t own a domain. If you do why would you use Afraid? There are lots of reliable DNS services to choose from and you can have interface and features that aren’t frozen in 1995.

          • @MehBlahEnglish
            1•1 month ago

            I own a lot of domains. Why would I want to run my own DNS when I can use a simple uncomplicated system that is time proven and reliable. They could of course set it up with a fisher price interface for thumb suckers who need flash. What feature do you need beyond standard records and a simple dynamic feature? The price isn’t that bad either.

            • lemmyvoreEnglish
              1•1 month ago

              You don’t run your own DNS, they are services hosted by someone else, just like Afraid. The difference, on top of the interface, is that they support modern record types, they have redundant servers all over the world, there’s a team working on them instead of just one guy, they have APIs that can let you manage your many domains easier, they have zone backup and restore etc.

              I’ve used Afraid too, back when I was starting out and didn’t know any better, but once I’ve seen some of the other services out there I’ve never looked back. You’ll never know what extra features you could want if your current service doesn’t offer you any.

              • @MehBlahEnglish
                1•1 month ago

                You don’t think you can run your own DNS? Currently I’m using local bind server at work to filter using commercial blocklists. It forwards all windows domain queries to the local AD servers DNS ensuring all internal windows related domains function normally. The external DNS queries though goes through bind and doesn’t care about anything except the root servers. I have firewall rules in place that prevent anyone from using any other DNS. Even DNS over TLS traffic is diverted to my DNS or blocked. It doesn’t rely on anything or any other organization other than the root servers.

                In the twenty something years I’ve used afraid.org for personal use I’ve had very little down time. I’ve tried other services many, many times and other than something like cloudflare there is no point in switching. If you don’t want to use it, don’t. It works just fine and you can’t match the price anywhere else. To give you a sense of how many years I’ve been doing my own DNS I set my first DNS server for a dial up ISP in 95.

                Finally, what record types are you referring to not being supported?