I’m new to self-hosting. All I did so far was install Ubuntu Server, enable SSH and tried setting up DuckDNS, which I could not set up automatic update of my IP following the documentation, neither updating manually through the website, which even though seems to be changed, when I ssh the domain, I get the initial IP
Anyone using DuckDNS? Is it working properly for you guys? Did I just mess something up?
What other DDNS providers would you recommend me?
You must log in or register to comment.
I put the curl command to update my duckdns IP in cron about 13 years ago, and have never needed to touch it once.
It’s just worked for me
This. Never had an issue.
Oh wow, me too. And I just checked and it’s still there, still works. The token is 10 years old.
I did this too, and my log always gets an OK. But the IP never changes.
The ip shouldnt change unless the server is down for a period of time and the ip is dynamic.
If it is returning OK then it sounds like duckdns is working as intended
i am using https://freedns.afraid.org/ for over a decade now and problems occured less than 5 times over that period. all others i ever tried were worse over time.
I had used duckdns for a while back in the day. Always worked great.
These days I have a domain at namecheap which provides a DynDNS feature as well so I’m using that.
Duck DNS works great… Most of the time. If you cannot accept downtime multiple times a year, get yourself a domain and a service like cloud flare instead. DuckDNS is free and you get more than you pay for, but the bar is low when the cost is zero.
Or just use two dns providers. I have duckdns and desec. That latter seems to be a bit faster and has’t had any downtime for me so far.
Yeah DuckDNS gave me many false positive outages where its resolution failed, for multiple half-days every year I used it (5yrs+).
I moved to the afraid.org and its been solid, if anyone’s looking for another free service - only cost is you have to log in once every six months to validate your account is not dormant. They have a paid tier which gives more features (that most home users will never need), and that allows the guy running it to fund a very reliable service.
I have dyndns. I don’t recommend them, unless a coworker just gave you their lifetime pro account for free.
Thanks Roody, wherever you are!
I have been using duckdns for a few years without issues. It should be simple enough , just set up a cron job with your details as listed on their site where you configure it. This keeps your dns entry up to date.
I got my domain through namecheap. So, I just use them, they have a dynamicdns implementation. I setup a namecheapddns docker container that auto updates mine.
Yep same DDClient is super simple to setup with name cheap. Followed ip address changes with very little if any down time. I’ve never noticed between ip changes.
Same! Except I use windows and they have a small app that you can install and run in the background which will update the IP if needed.
I also used duckdns for years before moving to this and I never had any issues using that either. It was the same thing, small app that ran on your machine and you needed the token and it just worked.
DuckDNS was resolving slow as hell for me so I ended up picking up a cheap domain from Porkbun, they got API access and it seems most of the ddns tools support them too
DuckDNS had been unreliable when I used it, but it’s been a while. I swapped over to desec.io but their signups aren’t always open. Can highly recommend them though, and they offer many paths to update the IP, including DynDNS(2) protocol or just ddclient.
Also works with certbot for Let’s encrypt certificates using dns challenge.
Another one I have seen recommended in here is afraid.org, adding it as haven’t seen it mentioned yet.
I’m surprised the amount of people saying they have had no issues with DucksDNS. I’ve used it for about five years and had issues on and off with it being unresponsive many times.
Gave up and moved to afraid.org about a year back and that’s been a very solid service ever since.
Can you do letsencrypt dns challenges against the free tier now? This was one reason I moved to duckdns. Plus I kept forgetting to login to keep the account alive so it would just stop working until I logged in and reactivated. Duckdns do emulate that experience with their random downtime though 😂
I’ve been using desec.io since it’s european, non profit and privacy oriented. Bring your own domain though. Works well, although my caddy plugin has problems getting certs sometimes. My pangolin instance never has any issues getting certs so might be caddy desec plugin specific.
I’ve used no-ip.com for years without issue.
My NAS supports a few services out of the box. If you have anything like that, see what they support natively first.
My Domain registrar has a reverse DNS service included.
Anything that supports bind’s built-in nsupdate.
You could be behind CGNAT - I’m not sure the best way to tell but it could be the reason.
I would also highly recommend buying a cheap domain to use - it would be the price of a coffee per year but makes life so much easier and you don’t have to depend on duckdns. You can buy through cloudflare, porkbun or many other options which you can search for a good DDNS service to update them.
I read briefly about CGNAT, a d I think this is the case, checking the IP of my services with external services I get an IP different from the one I see in my machine. Tested more than one DDNS service and all updated my IP with the same “wrong” value.
How do I solve this? Should I contact my ISP and hope they can provide a solution?
Yeah, first try your ISP to see if you can get a dynamic or fixed IP instead. Check if their website/FAQ mentions dynamic IP or cgnat. They might outright reject it, or try to upgrade you to an extortionate business package though. I signed up for my service and checked the cgnat before signing up but they hadn’t got around to updating their website that they changed their policy. After the surprise of being behind cgnat and after screenshotting their own website, I complained and hit upgraded to a higher level package for free.
You can use tailscale to get around it, but then you need to install it on all devices and login. You can use cloudflare tunnels and think you can set it to not require login for some services. Both rely on third parties. Both are also safer than exposing directly to the public internet.
If you want full control, you have to rent a cheap vps and setup a tunnel between that and your home server, then use the public IP of the vps for your services. Wireguard is probably the best choice for VPN. You could try pangolin, which is an open source cloudflare tunnel so is more complicated than a VPN but also includes a reverse proxy.
CGNAT does have a designated range by spec. 100.64.0.0/10, which covers addresses from 100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255. Technically they could be using any other private address space but it would be very uncommon in a modern ISP.
I didn’t know that, thanks for sharing
