DuckDNS is down again, seeking alternatives for multiple domains reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 14:01 I know the service is free and I'm grateful for that. I have been using DuckDNS for years but it has been unreliable the last month with downtime every other day. Now it's went from "its free so don't complain" to becoming completely unreliable. The easiest solution is buying a custom domain on cloudflare and using that but I have 3 sites so I need to purchase 3 domains and renew them yearly. That will add up fast. What are you using? Can you recommend how to save a buck? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Big_Booty_Pics · 2023-12-05 14:07 By 3 sites do you mean 3 services you host, or do you explicitly need 3 completely different domains? If you just have 3 things you're hosting you can easily get a way with subdomaining a single domain, ie paperless.dandreyd.com, actual.dandreyd.com, overseerr.dandreyd.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jusepal · 2023-12-05 14:12 dedyn.io is free or buy random 6 letters .xyz for 99c/year from https://gen.xyz/1111b then use subdomain for each service. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ADB-UK · 2023-12-05 14:24 I've used [https://www.dynu.com/](https://www.dynu.com/) for years. I just turned on Cloudflare tunnels using a Docker container giving me DDOS, reverse proxy, ssh and https access - took about an hour to set up and running fine. Based the set up on [https://www.crosstalksolutions.com/cloudflare-tunnel-easy- setup/](https://www.crosstalksolutions.com/cloudflare-tunnel-easy- setup/) \- a few screens have changed now but it's still close enough to follow. Just remember to set up 2FA for critical systems... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ADB-UK · 2023-12-05 14:27 I'm finding a few mail servers blocking mail from xyz domains by default :-( Just moved back to more 'normal' TLDs for some sites... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jusepal · 2023-12-05 14:32 Yes those cheap, weird tld domain aren't great for email deliverabilty. The traditional .com .net .org should always be the goto for that. But for making life easier without needing to remember a bunch of ip, it works great. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-12-05 14:46 https://desec.io is excellent. Free, no ads, no premium accounts, no nag emails, run by a non-profit based in germany. iirc the domain limit is 15 but if you ask nicely they might increase it for you if youre a heavy user. The control panel works well and offers everything i need, they have a API of course and its compatible with Lets Encrypt with the typical setups (Traefik, lego, Caddy with a plugin etc). They also offer free subdomains like `example.dedyn.io` which can be managed through the same panel. Or you already have a domain somewhere else, then change the nameservers to dedyn and you can manage "full" domains and the free subdomain under one panel all together. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SillyLilBear · 2023-12-05 14:58 DESEC works good ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sudden_Cheetah7530 · 2023-12-05 15:06 I thought I was doing something wrong... Thanks for letting me know. It is time to find a paid domain for me either. Paying for domain seems worth it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cornpay · 2023-12-05 15:28 My router from TPlink provides it's own DDNs, you do need a TP Link account for that though ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrpink57 · 2023-12-05 15:41 Weird DuckDNS has never gone down for me, are you down in the updating IP part? They do not host anything for you so I am unsure on them being down does much if your IP does not change? [https://freedns.afraid.org/](https://freedns.afraid.org/) This is a popular solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bytepond · 2023-12-05 15:49 You can probably just buy one domain and use subdomains. No need to buy three ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neon5k · 2023-12-05 15:57 Why not just buy a cheap domain? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CrustyBatchOfNature · 2023-12-05 16:09 This is the best answer. I was with Google Domains and moved to Cloudflare recently. Cheap for the .net domain I wanted and easy to just use subs then have Caddy reverse proxy those to my services. And no problem or cost later if I want to spin up a new service. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-05 16:12 Can I ask a stupid question. When you buy a domain (instead of using duckdns), who maps your public IP to that domain?? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 83736294827 · 2023-12-05 16:19 Add up fast? You only need a single domain and you can get a .com from cloudflare for less than $10/yr. You probably spend more on electricity running those services. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-05 16:20 Can you explain which service from dynu you are using? I get afraid when someone advertises something for free ---------------------------------------------------------------------- terramot · 2023-12-05 16:44 CloudFlare or any other DNS hosting provider. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kindly-Fruit3788 · 2023-12-05 16:45 Try ipv64.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dereksalem · 2023-12-05 16:45 Same. Most normal domains are like $12/yr with Google Domains, and that price is being transitioned to a few others now without even having to worry about anything. I have 4 actual domains, but I have like \~40 subdomains that are all dynamicDNS set-up, so I don't have to touch a thing. It works great. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EndlessHiway · 2023-12-05 16:54 Buy a domain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 17:05 I actually need 3 different domains because I have servers in three physical locations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 17:09 I'm in Europe, so maybe that's why. I looked on their website now, and my IP on there is correct, but I couldn't access anything through the entire day. This also happened on the other sites with Duck DNS, so I can rule out my server not updating the IP. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Other_Engineering454 · 2023-12-05 17:11 You can set each sub domain to point to a different IP address. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 17:14 Oh, I didn't mean subdomains. I need 3 different domains because I have servers on 3 physical locations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrpink57 · 2023-12-05 17:16 What do you mean by couldn't accessing anything? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 17:28 Can you elaborate? I didn't setup a reverse proxy jet, but could it be done with it? But I also need DDNS so that my other sites can update their IP once changed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ADB-UK · 2023-12-05 17:40 Their free DDNS service - I pay for a domain name ([https://www.namecheap.com/](https://www.namecheap.com/)) but point the name servers to dynu. I have a Debian box (well 5 actually) that runs the update script regularly even if the external IP address has not changed. If you are using multiple domain names at the same address you can set them up as a group and only update one record and this will update all of them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Big_Booty_Pics · 2023-12-05 17:49 All your reverse proxy does is forward traffic based on incoming traffic attributes. So if your server has service a, b, and c running, your reverse proxy can map subdomains to each service and serve traffic accordingly. So lets say you have the domain www.dandreyd.com, what you can do is make subdomains like: service1.dandreyd.com -> 1.2.3.4 (your Server IP) -> reverse proxy (reads your connecting from service1 subdomain) -> sends you to service located at 192.168.2.19 (service a's local IP) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 17:54 Ah, I do understand that. Thanks for the great explanation anyway :) I thought I can accomplish something like an selfhosted DNS server for external domains so like my A site has an actual domain and B site access this domain and sends its IP to an server on the A side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- asmiran · 2023-12-05 17:59 You just set DDNS to update `sub.my.domain` instead of `my.domain`, IME there isn't any additional configuration needed to use a subdomain, and there's no need for multiple subdomains to be in the same physical location. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- brisray · 2023-12-05 18:01 I've been using [DNSExit](https://dnsexit.com/) since 2011 with no problems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Big_Booty_Pics · 2023-12-05 18:05 You could do something like that but it would only work inside your network. Unless you have DNS records on your domain providers site, it wouldn't be globally accessible (generally). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-12-05 18:29 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fredflintstone88 · 2023-12-05 18:34 Would you mind sharing the scripts you run on your Debian box? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 18:39 Wait! I can purchase a domain on Cloudflare for example, create subdomains for it and configure it so that each site will update its own subdomain? That would be awesome! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 18:42 I meant that the DNS queries to DuckDNS weren't resolving, so I couldn't use any of my apps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ADB-UK · 2023-12-05 18:50 Best to use theirs as mine has MQTT reporting and other bits of my network here :-) [https://www.dynu.com/en-US/DynamicDNS/IP-Update- Protocol](https://www.dynu.com/en-US/DynamicDNS/IP-Update-Protocol) It's not hard to create a script file that runs the wget command once you gave your key details. I did note that I occasionally received a 'good' response even if the IP address had not changed - not that it matters. It may be worth checking if your router supports them or their GnuDIP service - saves scripting :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 83736294827 · 2023-12-05 19:09 You don’t need 3 different domains for that. Duckdns only gives out subdomains so if that worked for you then you can make your own “ducksns” buy buying s single domain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- watchdog_timer · 2023-12-05 19:09 Yes, you just create a separate A record for each subdomain and have each record point to the IP address of the corresponding server. You can then run a script on each server to detect when its IP address changes, and when it does, have it update the A record's IP address using the Cloudflare API . ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rursache · 2023-12-05 19:20 same with ASUS routers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Bak4 · 2023-12-05 19:28 It has been down for me too, I am in europe too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mrpink57 · 2023-12-05 19:35 If you are both in Europe I wonder if it is AWS since that is where they host this service and not duckdns themselves. While it is down can you ping your domain? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- billiarddaddy · 2023-12-05 19:53 Noip.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 19:56 I used it some years ago, but every couple of months missed the "confirm your hostname" email and found out only after everything stopped working. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CatoDomine · 2023-12-05 19:58 >I need 3 domains because I have servers on 3 physical locations. You don't need 3 separate domains for this. You can just use sub domains. suppose you register [dandreyd.net](https://dandreyd.net) you can use ​ |stockholm.dandreyd.net |A |172.19.32.76| |:-|:-|:-| |frankfurt.dandreyd.net|A|10.57.34.52| |luangprabang.dandreyd.net|A|192.168.231.23| ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 20:17 Can this be done in the free tier on Cloudflare with their domain? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dudeimatwork · 2023-12-05 20:18 I use CloudFlare and their API to create my own DynDNS. Works really well. Here is a good example of the setup: https://github.com/K0p1-Git/cloudflare-ddns-updater ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-05 20:27 Any reason you don't use the popular one from github? https://github.com/timothymiller/cloudflare-ddns ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xIndirect · 2023-12-05 20:40 Yes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dudeimatwork · 2023-12-05 20:42 No reason, it's a fairly simple script in general, I just wrote it myself in bash. I bookmarked that repo due to the Slack integration, added that to my own script. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CatoDomine · 2023-12-05 20:48 Yes, the free tier DNS is able to create the A records as I have indicated, if there is a limit on standard DNS records (A, CNAME, TXT, etc) I haven't hit it yet and I have a boat load of DNS records on the free tier DNS. It doesn't even have to be a domain registered with the Cloudflare registrar, But if you are registering a new domain and using cloudflare DNS there's really no reason to not use their registrar. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- billiarddaddy · 2023-12-05 21:33 I got tired of that email and just gave em the $25. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Perpetual_Nuisance · 2023-12-05 21:50 OP has 3 servers in 3 different physical locations. As OP clearly stated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GiveMeAnAlgorithm · 2023-12-05 21:55 Saaame! I got multiple alerts from my monitoring system today, telling me that it was impossible to resolve. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Other_Engineering454 · 2023-12-05 22:57 This is what I was talking about in my reply. Thanks for explaining it watchdog. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BoundlessBit · 2023-12-05 23:07 I use a 1€/month vps (1 core, 1gb ram) to host a reverse proxy a la nginx or traefik. Therefore it has a static ip, which is all I need. On my Homeserve, which hosts all of my services, i have a script that detects ip changes and updates the ip on the vps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Franvcg · 2023-12-05 23:08 It is also down for me every once in a while. I monitor their top level domain with uptime kuma and every time that I try to use something that needs my duckdns subdomain and it doesnt work I go on uptime kuma and there you go, duckdns is down again. In the last 24h they had an uptime of 93.56%, being down multiple times over the day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DarkKnyt · 2023-12-06 01:02 What's the difference between the dynamic dns and managed dns accounts on deSEC? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MLGPonyGod123 · 2023-12-06 01:04 I didn't realize subdomains are location based ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zanfar · 2023-12-06 01:13 > but I have 3 sites so I need to purchase 3 domains and renew them yearly. That will add up fast. What do you mean "add up fast"? It will add up exactly three times, or about $36/year. Also, functionally, there is nothing two domains get you that 1 domain doesn't. > What are you using? A domain I own on a business-grade DNS host. DNS is, by definition, something that needs public, high-availability hosting. That costs money. If you're not willing to pay for it, you're never going to have a great experience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-12-06 01:20 Not sure what you mean. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lesigh · 2023-12-06 01:27 Read a bit about DNS. There's no one domain per one server. You can create a records that point to a variety of IPs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- souam666 · 2023-12-06 01:55 You really own that username ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jason_he54 · 2023-12-06 02:16 Essentially whoever’s DNS service you use. DNS queries are essentially a chain of queries that continues until it’s answered at some point in that chain, and if it’s not, then it has no clue what to do. There’s very broad nameservers like one for all “.com” domains. That could narrow itself down to Cloudflare’s Authoritative Nameservers if you choose to select Cloudflare as the place to manage your DNS settings for your domain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ChokunPlayZ · 2023-12-06 02:37 you can have multiple subdomains per domain. see: [subdomain (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subdomain). I use Synology DNS because it comes with my NAS there's also a service you can run that will update your IP on Cloudflare automatically I also have 2 different domains for public-facing services and backend services that only have to talk to each other (with strict [WAF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_application_firewall) rules) here's a very simple breakdown of how it will work. site1.domain.com points to first site IP site2.domain.com points to second site IP and so on, there's no limit, you can have hundreds, even thousands if you want to you also DONT need a reverse proxy for this, it just help to route traffic to the correct services in your internal network ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DarkKnyt · 2023-12-06 03:15 I figured it out by just yoloing and registering. The two radio buttons at the login threw me off but it was super easy to make a new domain name. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BluCobalt · 2023-12-06 03:32 >These are **not** a "scam" like Freenom or similar things. The big differences are: When you say freenom is a scam, what are you referring to? I've generally had good experiences with those domains ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DAndreyD · 2023-12-06 09:04 That would work for me, thanks! Didn't know you can have multiple subdomains on Cloudflare pointing to different IP addresses. Thought that subdomains are only used for internal traffic using reverse proxies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JoeK1337 · 2023-12-06 09:57 Hurricane Electric DNS is free up to 50 domains. Supports dynamic dns https://dns.he.net/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BluePhi09 · 2023-12-06 13:07 You could use IPv64 to make ddns subdomains for free https://ipv64.net/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RedWyvv · 2023-12-06 14:38 I can vouch for ClouDNS.net! They are very good and got Anycast servers