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

I used to just use a script with cron to update Cloudflare DNS records but these days I don’t screw around with exposing anything to the public internet directly, I just use Tailscale.

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!

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.

Another one I have seen recommended in here is afraid.org, adding it as haven't seen it mentioned yet.

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 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.

I ended up using Dynv6, great and simple serivce does exactly what I need. Made in Germany.

https://dynv6.com/

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.

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’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.

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.

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

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 am using Dynu. It works fine and it's free, no complaints. Their app for Linux to update periodically didn't seem to work well from my experience, I just set up a cron job to do it instead.

I already used desec.io for my domains back when I had static IP blocks at home so I just used the dyndns api with ddclient to update them automatically for my dynamic IP.

NoIP works great for me so far!

I use ddclient on my vps

I used duckdns for years without any issues at all. Only reason I switched is because I'm using Pangolin and tunneling instead of exposing my IP directly.

This might be obvious but it could be caching? Use a tool like dig to check if it's really updated. Not had a problem with duckdns, works good.

If you have a Mikrotik router, you can use its built-in Dynamic DNS, and configure a CNAME on your domain name

I am using DuckDNS and it's working perfectly for me. I use the DynDNS feature of my Fritz!Box to update my DuckDNS-IP. The documentation on their website is spot-on for me, even for my IPv6 and I never had any issues with DuckDNS.

What I like most about the service is the possibility to use subdomains like my-service.my-username.duckdns.org. I don't know whether this is a commong feature or not.

When you had problems updating your IP Adresse did you consider that DNS information takes some time to propagate through the internet? I think it is not guaranteed that you can access a recently changed domain.

How did you test your DuckDNS entries?

DuckDNS has long enough latency (over 2000ms) where Google Assistant can't connect. I moved to FreeDDNS and my Home Assistant issues went away.

Reference: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/google-assistant-keeps-losing-connection-with-home-assistant/468062/140?page=7

I'm currently using https://ipv64.net/

Been using ddnss.de before that for some time, but they had some outages. No problems with ipv64 so far.

Any DNS provider is good if they offer an API that lets you use PUT to modify DNS records. You can make a small bash script and crontab it. I also used DuckDNS for a while, and it worked fine.

I used nsupdate for years and it worked just fine. I remember it being down, one time only, for like five minutes. For a project that depends entirely on donations, the service and availability they provide are just awesome.

Another free option I like is dynu.com

They have an example ddclient config in their FAQ: https://www.dynu.com/FAQ/Dynamic-DNS-Service#IPUpdate

I’ve used duckDNS for years. A couple of years ago it started flaking out every couple of months so I migrated off it.

cloudns.net

On the off chance you’re facing issues due to CGNAT, you’d likely need to work around it with something like a cloudflare tunnel, or purchasing a cheap VPS and porting all traffic through WireGuard or similar.

For my server I bought a domain on loopia.se and pay for no other features than the domain name. On the Loopia website I then changed the DNS nameserver to Cloudflare and use a script to update the IP of my network. Cloudflare has some package you can install on Linux to update the IP but I never tried it.

Well, if you use DDNS I assume you have some kind of server behind that. I just self host a godns container. No need for any service except an DNS API. I use cloudflare. But my IP only changes rarely, so I can't tell you how fast that setup propegates

This is a great question that is relevant for me this week. Been trying to set up a wireguard vpn and found I need a DDNS. Lots of good answers to look into in the comments. Thanks everyone.

For dynamic updating of dns, don't use ddclient or cron scripts on the server. Instead use inadyn.

Ddclient is more or less just dead/maintenance mode.

also using cron scripts kinda sucks and is ugly.

just use inadyn and spare yourself headache.

You'd basically just add something like this to the inadyn.conf file

provider duckdns.org {
    username         = YOUR_TOKEN
    password         = noPasswordForDuckdns
    hostname         = YOUR_DOMAIN.duckdns.org
}