77
Self-hosted blog - do I need a static IP address? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
98 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

hi everyone,

I was just about to self-host a Ghost blog but then was warned that my ISP might change my external IP address at any time, so I would need to pay for a static IP address.

Is that true?

(I'd not seen much about that in stuff I've looked up so far about self hosting)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 0 points 1 year ago (22 children)

You only need a static address for hosting email or VoIP.

Email works fine with non-static IP addresses. I suspect VoIP does too.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 22 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    "works fine" as in you can pretend it works, but you will get filtered by any larger email provider.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Dynamic IPs are filtered out, even on my server. This is done by using scores provided by Spamhaus. The majority of connects from such IPs are botnets.

    You can run a private server on your dynamic IP. It should not connect to public servers though.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (19 children)

    No it does not. You need an active PTR record for email to work for most of the major carriers (Gmail, O365, etc...). Many providers will just outright block consumer IP ranges as well.

    You cannot host an email server on dynamic addresses.

    Edit: And you've edited in the VoIP part of your comment... Same thing there, you need PTR and such for those services to work well... Which generally can't be assigned to dynamic addresses.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 19 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I never had an issue doing VoIP on a dynamic IP.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    Then you have a SIP trunk provider that doesn't validate domain ownership... I'd like to know that companies name if you don't mind sharing. They're stupidly rare to the point that I view it as a unicorn situation.

    Edit: To clarify, I've tried finding such providers and failed for several years... They all want PTR validation for "security"

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (13 children)

    Reverse DNS is different than static IP.

    But yes for outbound email, if you can't control reverse DNS you will have pain. (Inbound is totally fine) You can in theory just use whatever hostname the ISP's reverse DNS resolves to however you will get some spam score (or be rejected) as it doesn't match your "from" domain.

    Outbound email is a huge pain really no matter what. Unless you have a long-term lease on the IP and it isn't in a bad network you really have to pay someone else if you want reliable delivery.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

    You can't assign a PTR record without a static address though. No ISP will do PTR that follows DHCP updates. I haven't had issues with my leased IPs from my ISP (Through Centurylink). Though a year back I moved and haven't been able to get a leased IP from my new provider... I have to relay my emails now through a service, that has been a pain in the ass. But now we head into anecdotal nonsense.

    And yes, we're talking about hosting services. We're in Selfhosted... and the OP is talking about publishing their ghost website... a webserver.

    But no, email is otherwise not an issue. I've been selfhosting a couple of personal domains for over a decade without issue. I also host several email services for work... no issues outside of some of our clients who want us to use their SMTP servers which apparently suck. But not my issue if their IT fails at managing it.

    Edit: DHCP -> PTR auto follow is a thing that exists though... which just makes it sad that ISPs don't support it. I literally have hostname updates available and used inside of my own network. Just another sad day when pro-sumers are able to implement RFCs (RFC 2136, opnsense pushes updates to my internal DNS servers) better than ISPs.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (8 children)

    You don't need a PTR record though. I just use DKIM and SPF and have no issues.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    Google I know for sure does not. They don't even list it as a requirement. https://support.google.com/a/answer/174124?hl=en

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (5 children)

    The first link in my previous comment is literally gmail returning an error because no ptr...

    Edit: your page is about setting up dkim while using their workspaces. You don't control their ptrs.

    Edit2: notice they don't talk about SPF or dmarc on that page either. SPF has been require for google as well for a while and dmarc is highly recommended though not strictly required.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    From over a year ago. Requirements change.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Your page is explicitly a support page for dkim config. It is not a list of email requirements. YOU don't control their ptr records. Ptr records are placed on the IP space side. Google controls theirs for workspaces. So that page won't have help on the matter. Requirements haven't changed. I control systems that send millions of messages a month...

    Ptr, SPF and dkim are now mandated. Dmarc is highly recommended for gmail...

    Edit: https://forum.directadmin.com/threads/gmail-rejecting-emails-due-to-missing-or-incorrect-ptr-record-%E2%80%93-how-to-set-this-up-correctly.72802/
    https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1foik1l/false_error_message_does_not_have_a_ptr_record/
    https://dmarcreport.com/blog/googles-guidelines-to-send-emails-to-gmail-users/

    How many links you need before you recognize that you're wrong? All three of these are from last 10 months. One of which was from March.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don't know what to tell you. I'm literally looking at my DNS records at cloudflare that point to my home IP and there is no PTR entry and yet I have dozens of emails in my gmail account about scheduled process and Prometheus alerts etc. The last undeliveryable I got from Gmail was 2 month ago when I was setting up the email server. Maybe because I'm on Google Fiber it's not enforcing it but I have no PTR record.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I’m literally looking at my DNS records at cloudflare

    PTR records are NOT on the domain side.

    https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-ptr-record/

    An example record lookup would be 8.8.8.8.in-addr.arpa. Like I've said twice now. YOU don't control google's PTRs (since you linked to google workspaces). They DO have PTRs setups.

    IP of 142.251.2.109 resolved for my DNS.

    https://easydmarc.com/tools/ptr-record-lookup?domain=142.251.2.109&dns_server=1.1.1.1&dns_type=PTR

    Resolves to a record name of dl-in-f109.1e100.net

    Edit: Another name for a PTR record is rDNS. Or Reverse DNS. and that name is a bit more descriptive in that it's IP -> Name rather than DNSes normal job of Name -> IP address

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I don't use Google Workspaces that's just the first article I found.

    Maybe I misunderstood then. I though PTR records had to resolve to your email domain, not just match the IP address with an A record that resolves to the same IP. There is a PTR record that resolves to ip.googlefiber.net but it does not match my email domain.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Does anyone know of a short course I could do/attend that teaches the basics of this networking stuff?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Your local college might do networking courses/stuff. honestly though, there's enough youtube content out there by really respected people that you can likely just get away with that... Start with words/topics you see mentioned in this thread. Example, search youtube for DDNS... and if that video says something you don't understand search for that topic. Eventually you'll have a decent grasp on what's going on.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

    yeah fair play - I'll go that route. Do you happen to know any content creators who explain stuff well in this area?

    (Context - our self-hosting is part of a wider project to make self-hosting easier, on the cheap, for normies)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Ehh, yeah, it used to work fine. You're right that is a much harder things to do these days

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    PTR lookups has been a thing for email servers for a very long time... "used to work fine" would have been early 2000's as far as I can remember.

    PTR is de facto requirement for over 20 years now. So unless you're talking about pre-turn of the century, not really... email servers haven't worked without PTRs for a very long time.

    I had to look it up, but Yahoo and AOL implemented PTR checks in 2003-2004. Gmail had it out of the box in 2004.

    Can you run a server without it? Yes... and it will work with any other server that doesn't mandate valid PTR records. But no major consumer email server has supported receiving mail from a PTR-less server for 20+ years now. So you're not going to be able to email basically anyone from your server.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •