Selfhosted

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 open~~dns~~wrt router to keep the dynamic ip updated.

Self hosting doesn't mean you should host everything yourself at home, using a VPS you manage (so the data inside it is still yours) is also a viable option for selfhosting. I myself host some services at home and a few others in a VPS.

As for Dyndns, I've used a few providers over the years. DuckDNS is the one I've been using for 5 years or so and it's not failed me once. Pretty happy with it.

Maybe you could have a duckdns pointing to your dynamic IP and your domains / subdomains with a CNAME pointing to the dyndns address?

Since you run already OpenWrt, you can check out https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/ddns/client

There is a list on this page of compatible services. If you don't want to use one more service (DNS), you can use a domain registrar with an API (like porkbun) and find online tools that work with that.

Be aware of the risks of hosting your websites publicly from home, make sure to run them in very isolated environments. Having your VPS compromised is bad, but having your home network compromised is much worse!

ddclient paired with a supported provider.

Many DNS providers have an API and are supported by various dynamicDNS clients. I use Cloudflare and the built in client on my Opnsense router.

OpenWRT should have a client too that supports a bunch of services.

VPS with a tunnel between it and home services (Wireguard/Tailscale, etc)in my opinion is Best Way as it isolates your home gateway (no open ports, because you make outbound connections to your VPS), and let VPS handle Identity and Access Management

(Or an equivalent isolating architecture).

Alternatively, Tailscale has a Funnel feature which can route public traffic into your Tailscale network. Though I don't love this approach, it does work for low-volume connections.

There are two options, one is tunneling (e.g. tailscale, cloudfare tunnels, or a VPS either with special software or plain old SSH port forward constant connection). The other option, the most popular answer (I think, influenced by how yoy asked) is Dynamic DNS or DynDNS (e.g. duck, hurricane, freedns, etc.) this second one is like the classic solution.

Script that checks your external IP and updates your DNS provider via API.

I'm using cloudflare as my nameserver and the free API seems to work just fine with ddclient.

You can get super cheap VPSs and use them just as a reverse proxy (with access via VPN). I host 11 servers using one single-core VPS as a reverse proxy. All data resides on premises, in house. I pay 10/yr for VPS. It definitely does not defeat the purpose.

Get your own domain, find a free DNS service that provides an API, and it becomes a simple matter of updating a DNS A record whenever your IP changes.

Here's a starting point: https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/dns-providers-who-easily-integrate-with-lets-encrypt-dns-validation/86438

Don't use a DynamicDNS service, they're usually crap and they make you depend on a domain you don't own.

If you go down the VPS route, a headscale server on a cheap $3.50 VPS would be the way to go. Wouldn't even have to deal with IP addresses at that point, while still being able to self-host all your services, with the cheap VPS being a glorified switch/firewall.

Namecheap domains include a dynamic DNS application for free and it works well. Be aware that it only runs on Windows.

Free Dyndns services seem to be a bit crap

Why do you say that? https://freedns.afraid.org/ and https://www.duckdns.org are very solid and if you're looking for something more corporate even Cloudflare offers that service for free.

I think you got enough recommendations for several tunneling solutions.

Apart from that (and free DynDNS) you could also use a regular paid DNS provider. Some of them also offer DynDNS or an API. I think I saw some regular providers in the list of my DynDNS client on my router, next to the super cheap or free ones.

How often does your IP actually change? Mine changes so rarely (during extended power outages, say) that I am able to just update my IP manually when it does.

I even used to run my own authoritative DNS server at home (the one offered by my registrar isn't configurable enough, think SRV and TXT records) - for that, I have a web UI at my registrar to set the IP addresses of the DNS server.

I've used big names like ns1 and Cloudflare for free.

Cloudflare has an api for easy dynamic dns. I use oznu/docker-cloudflare-ddns to manage this, it's super easy:

docker run \
  -e API_KEY=xxxxxxx \
  -e ZONE=example.com \
  -e SUBDOMAIN=subdomain \
  oznu/cloudflare-ddns

Then I just make a CNAME for each of my public facing services to point to 'subdomain.example.com' and use a reverse proxy to get incoming traffic to the right service.

FreeDNS works pretty well as long as you don't need more than 5 DNS records.

Wow thanks everyone. I think I need to take another look at some of the DynDNS provides and digest all your great feedback.

Id like to go beyond personal self hosting stuff and maybe run some stuff that requires Federation. Im just thinking at the moment.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

9 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.

[Thread #891 for this sub, first seen 27th Jul 2024, 19:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Many registrars let you buy a domain and set up dynamic DNS for it within their system so you can own a domain and get dyndns on it.

Otherwise you could accomplish it with a VPS but you'd only need the smallest one available because it would just need to run nginx to forward to your home ip (and a small tool to update that IP when it changes). So you could probably get something for less than $5/mo.

You can pay for dyndns service which should be more reliable than free ones. I don't have any experience with those, so I can't give any recommendations. What I'm running is that I use few of the free ones which are updated either from my router or from a linux VM and I've just pointed few easy to remember CNAME records from my own domain to those dynamic addresses. It's not the best thing in the world, but my dynamic IP tends to be pretty static as it usually changes only when my own hardware is down for a longer period of time (few hours or so, so a longer power outage or a hardware maintenance gone wrong).

I've been using No-IP free plan for years without issues. Inputted the credentials to my routers DDNS client and then basically forgot about it. Free users need to confirm their account once a month via email but that's just one click.

If your domain registrar happens to have an API to update DNS entries, you could implement DDNS yourself by writing a simple automated script to check the external IP (e.g. via ipify.org) and if it's changed from the last check then call the API to update the DNS entries.

Don't expose your services directly to the internet. Instead rent a VPS and the use Wireguard to bring the traffic back home. In your home network your services should be in there own VLAN and everything should be isolated and sandboxed. Everything has the potential to be compromised so always practice least privilege and defense in depth.

I use digital ocean as dns host. They have an API, so I check my IP with a script and update if needed.