(Free) DDNS recommendation?

[XIII]

So far I have been a happy ASUS DDNS user, but recently I read several posts from experts on this forum who don't use this ASUS service, but a third-party service instead, with uptime and router independence as the main reason for doing so.

Which (free) DDNS service(s) do you recommend?

I have seen people mentioning No-IP and Afraid, but there are probably more worth investigating?

I had a quick look at these two; both quickly presented some disadvantages: No-IP domains need to be manually confirmed every 30 days and Afraid domains are owned by other people, so both still seem to involve hassle/dependance?

Probably what you get for being a free rider... (the ASUS service is probably paid by buying the router)

 

[martinr]

So far I have been a happy ASUS DDNS user, but recently I read several posts from experts on this forum who don't use this ASUS service, but a third-party service instead, with uptime and router independence as the main reason for doing so.

Which (free) DDNS service(s) do you recommend?

I have seen people mentioning No-IP and Afraid, but there are probably more worth investigating?

I had a quick look at these two; both quickly presented some disadvantages: No-IP domains need to be manually confirmed every 30 days and Afraid domains are owned by other people, so both still seem to involve hassle/dependance?

Probably what you get for being a free rider... (the ASUS service is probably paid by buying the router)

Exactly the position I’m in.

is Asus DDNS working for you right now? If you forced a new public IP address on the router, would Asus DDNS update or is it broken until Asus correct the certificate error? (I’d try it myself but I am away and I need the vpn and can’t take a chance of locking myself out.)

I’d willingly pay Asus for the DDNS service but, as you say, reliability is paramount. I can see why it’s called Afraid: just one look at the website puts the Fear of God into one. And a cursory look at the others on offer don’t exactly inspire a warm feeling.

I have set up an account on Afraid but haven’t yet switched over on the router. And if you tell me asuscomm.com still works for you, I’m very tempted to take my chances and leave things alone. It may well work faultlessly, but having a domain of strangled.net doesn’t exactly give me warm feeling either.

Asus DDNS has really served me well and is so easy to set up, compared to wading through the Afraid website, which is like swimming uphill through treacle. All I want is a reliable DDNS address!

 

[XIII]

I use the Asus DDNS to remotely SSH to my router and Raspberry Pi boards.

That's still working (but I believe my IP is pretty stable).

 

[martinr]

I use the Asus DDNS to remotely SSH to my router and Raspberry Pi boards.

That's still working (but I believe my IP is pretty stable).

Hopefully, other current users of asuscomm.com will let us know exactly what its present status is, and others will hopefully answer your main question.

 

[Zastoff]

Has been working flawlessly here with asuscomm.com DDNS and pixelserv-tls generated cert <--in amtm aswell
I also use it for remote SSH and my VPN-server

 

[Jack Yaz]

I use cloudflare via dnsomatic (though i own the domain i use, so its not completely free)

 

[Dabombber]

I know this isn't what you asked for, but if you're finding DDNS services to be increasingly unfriendly, it might be worth considering a domain name of your own. They can be pretty cheap and there should be scripts to update most common registrars on the wiki.

 

[Morac]

I gave up on looking for a free or low prices DDNS and just picked up a domain from GoogleDomains, which supports DDNS. It was $12 a year which is a lot cheaper than a standalone DDNS. Dyndns, which used to be free wanted to charge me $70 a year.


https://support.google.com/domains/answer/6010092?hl=en

 

[grifo]

I've been using https://www.dynu.com/ for a while, it's free, it doesn't need manually confirming every x days and it works fine. I used to use no-ip but switched to dynu after no-ip introduced the 30 days website confirmation that I was regularly missing.

I'm using it on my RT-AC87U with a ddns-start script.

 

[XIII]

I know this isn't what you asked for, but if you're finding DDNS services to be increasingly unfriendly, it might be worth considering a domain name of your own. They can be pretty cheap and there should be scripts to update most common registrars on the wiki.

I do "own" several domain names, but all are registered at a registrar that's not on the Wiki.

Last week I contacted them about this. They don't offer DDNS or an API to change items.

Maybe I should transfer one domain, or purchase an additional one...

 

[XIII]

Lexicon, a CLI (and Python library) to manipulate DNS records on various DNS providers in a standardized/agnostic way, might be interesting...

(that does support my registrar)

 

[XIII]

Looks like a simple shell script (using curl) might do the job!

Unfortunately that would require disabling 2FA on my registrars account...

 

[Mikeyy]

Why would you need registar which has DDNS option for your domain?
I use private domain, from which I pointed subdomain to my ddns which is xxx.duckdns.org (yes I use duckdns for ddns).

It works perfectly, duckdns isn't seen anywhere and I almost forgot which ddns service I'm using since it's always my domain.

 

[elorimer]

I used afraid for one Comcast location because it was one of only two DDNS services supported by the router they insist we use. I used Asus for the other two where I have Asus routers. I haven't had outages for either for years.

 

[XIII]

Why would you need registar which has DDNS option for your domain?
I use private domain, from which I pointed subdomain to my ddns which is xxx.duckdns.org (yes I use duckdns for ddns).

I'm also using a private domain, but currently with Asus DDNS.

If the registrar supports DDNS, it would cut a (non-malicious) "man in the middle" service.

 

[^Tripper^]

I've been using Asus' DDNS service for awhile now without any issues until this recent SNAFU with the certs. Never had an issue until yesterday, obviously right after thinking how fortunate I have been to not have any issues.. Note to self; stop thinking about how fortunate I've been.

Same boat as you, been looking at the various options and the free ones just don't seem to inspire any confidence. Wouldn't mind paying for a service but the prices seem kinda of steep for whats being offered especially in my use case.

Keeping a close eye on this thread, hopefully someone points out an obvious simple solution that I'm just not seeing. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Mikeyy]

As I said above, using https://www.duckdns.org/ for a few years now. Didn't have a single problem yet.
Maybe now that I praised them I'll have, but hopefully not.

It's little more complicated to use with Merlin since you need script, but on Tomato it was only need to enter link to duckdns.org with your token and it would work.

 

[martinr]

I've been using Asus' DDNS service for awhile now without any issues until this recent SNAFU with the certs. Never had an issue until yesterday, obviously right after thinking how fortunate I have been to not have any issues.. Note to self; stop thinking about how fortunate I've been.

Same boat as you, been looking at the various options and the free ones just don't seem to inspire any confidence. Wouldn't mind paying for a service but the prices seem kinda of steep for whats being offered especially in my use case.

Keeping a close eye on this thread, hopefully someone points out an obvious simple solution that I'm just not seeing. Wouldn't be the first time.

So what happened yesterday? Did your ISP change your IP address?

I’m thinking of seeing if my ISP will give me a fixed IP address. (Seems like the tail wagging the dog: I just want to connect reliably to my router remotely. I’m really not interested in running scripts to achieve that nor in getting right down into the minutiae of DDNS.)

 

[martinr]

So what happened yesterday? Did your ISP change your IP address?

I’m thinking of seeing if my ISP will give me a fixed IP address. (Seems like the tail wagging the dog: I just want to connect reliably to my router remotely. I’m really not interested in running scripts to achieve that nor in getting right down into the minutiae of DDNS.)

No deal on the fixed IP address, so I’ve updated DDNS to Afraid and await with trepidation to find out if it’s worked when my IP address next changes.

 

[XIII]

I wonder how often my IP address actually changes, so I created a ddns-start script to send me a push notification (using Pushover) when the IP address is changed.

Let's see when I get the first one... (and how often next)