
Dyn Decided To Stop Offering Free Accounts for Dynamic DNS - pentium10
http://dyn.com/blog/why-we-decided-to-stop-offering-free-accounts/
======
edent
What's disturbing is the number of products which have dyn.com integration
built in. Nearly every ADSL modem I've had in the last 10 years has had a
username/password field for their service.

It would have been great if they could have monetized that existing base -
instead, hundreds of thousands of users will wake up one day next month and
things will have mysteriously stopped working.

~~~
tveita
It would make sense to have a standardised protocol, so you could just enter a
URL, username and password.

That way any provider could offer it as a service without custom support in
each router.

I think RFC 2136 may support this, but it's fairly complex and needs a
separately defined method of authentication, so it's no wonder home routers
don't let you set this up.

[http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2136.txt](http://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2136.txt)

------
mynegation
I was a free-rider of their free tier for a while, but I totally understand
and respect their decision. My main problem is not that I do not want to pay
20-30$ a year for a dynamic DNS, my problem is that it is either one of their
domains or I have to bring domain services to them.

I own a VPS, I own a domain and I was wondering if I could do something
myself. Does anyone have any recommendations how to set up DIY dynamic DNS? I
would like home.mydomainexample.com or even home.homelan.mydomainexample.com
to point to my home dynamic IP.

~~~
z92
I have setup my own DDNS server, in two Digital Ocean boxes.

\- You have to run your own DNS service.

\- And setup a PHP page on the server, which when called will update the zone
file.

But the next problem is elsewhere. All routers seem to have hardcoded DDNS
server names. Therefore even if you install your own service, there is no way
you can call it from a router.

It would have been better if routers had accepted a "DDNS protocol" \+ "a
server IP" instead.

I have my home linux server. But I can't share this solution with my friends
that don't run home servers.

~~~
josteink
Using open-source router-firmware fixes most of these pains and gives you the
freedom you want. For everything and not just dynamic DNS.

Both OpenWRT and DDWRT are reputable firmwares which supports a wide array of
routers.

------
meshko
Early donors still get their free account as promised. Faith in humanity
restored. I am proud to be part of the early DynDNS history in this small way.

------
stephenr
[http://zonomi.com](http://zonomi.com) may be useful for the "i have a domain
but don't want to DIY a DynDNS replacement" crowd. A single zone with up to 10
records can be hosted for free, and one of the features is a simeple GET based
update API for DynDNS style operation.

------
Osmium
What's the easiest way to run your own dynamic DNS service with your own
domain? I'm guessing something like Amazon's Route 53 with an updater script,
such as
[https://gist.github.com/natlownes/2061658](https://gist.github.com/natlownes/2061658)

~~~
stephenr
[http://zonomi.com](http://zonomi.com) has this functionality exposed via a
simple GET based API, and it's available on their free account too

------
chrissnell
Rackspace offers DNS with all cloud accounts and doesn't charge for it and as
far as I know, you can sign up for a cloud account and not actually purchase
any services, though I would probably put some files in Cloud Files so you're
at least paying them something to keep the account around. You can update your
records via their API or via their control panel and there are no per-change
or per-domain fees.

~~~
nextweek2
In my experience with the UK rackspace DNS is that the TTL can only be as low
as 600 seconds and will automatically reset to 24 hours after 7 days.

You could be left with a long window before your hosts IP gets updated by your
local DNS cache.

------
zokier
Oh, I remember using dyndns back in the day. It was remarkably convenient to
run Apache on my desktop computer, I could just drop files to my www directory
and have link ready to be pasted on IRC. Of course that was way before Dropbox
et al came to be.

------
lakwn
I used to pay for a subscription, but I canceled it because I was using it for
two hosts only. They are now offering a subscription for 20 dollars, which I
think is very expensive considering the two hosts I need.

Oh, well. Time to move on.

~~~
Bootvis
I'm very happy with FreeDNS[1]. It just works (never had a problem) and they
have nice domains.

[1]: [https://freedns.afraid.org/](https://freedns.afraid.org/)

~~~
htk
Nice tip.

If anyone here is using DD-WRT, take a look at these instructions before
trying to set up your freedns subdomain (needs a token instead of
login/password): extracted from [http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DDNS_-
_How_to_setup_Cus...](http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DDNS_-
_How_to_setup_Custom_DDNS_settings_using_embedded_inadyn_-_HOWTO)

Go to [http://freedns.afraid.org/dynamic/](http://freedns.afraid.org/dynamic/)
and login with your normal username and password for the freedns service.
Click "Direct URL" on the domain you would like to be set to your WAN IP
address. Copy everything from the right of the ? in the address bar.

Router Settings: DDNS Service: freedns.afraid.org User Name: USERNAME
Password: PASSWORD Host Name: yourdomain.com,What_You_Copied_Before Force
Update Interval 10

(Note: Since afraid.org doesn't require a username and password when doing a
"wget-style" update, you can also just do the following to keep from exposing
your username and password: User Name: guest Password: guest)

------
yabatopia
Two of the default options on my router are DynDNS and NoIP. They both have
paid plans. Is there anyone with experience with both providers who can
compare the pros and cons of these services?

------
motters
Any of the free Dyn users which this affects: move to freedns.

