DynDNS ends free services | Hacker News Reader

DynDNS ends free services

linktracking.dyn.com

155 pointsleeoniya116 comments

Alternatives I switched to a while ago:

What I like about these two is that you are able to update the IP by just curl'ing a certain URL, which works great in combination with a cronjob.

Edit: It looks like OP submitted the tracking URL from the newsletter, his ID is probably going to stick out in their analytics.

Personally I use https://www.noip.com

I switched from DynDNS to NoIP last year, but I'm probably going to switch again soon; NoIP's Mac auto-updater is broken and they don't seem to give a shit about fixing it.

Another vote for https://freedns.afraid.org, the guy who runs it is a great dude.

Exactly what he said.

I just wanted to back it up as one of their paying customers for the past 5 years who had plenty of interaction with the owner.

Ironically your comment brings even less value to the table.

Plus, who doesn't want a subdomain at crabdance.com?

Also a user of this. Never had a problem with it. Have contributed to the third party scripts. Hope it never goes away!

I use it as the DNS for my domains actually love that service.

I've just signed up with https://www.dtdns.com as replacement for dyn - seems ok so far and my router supports it

DuckDNS[0] is another alternative that I've been seeing posted on reddit. Works exactly like the rest -- curl a URL to update your IP. Really nice staff. I've got a PR[1] for a homebrew formula for duckdns which uses launchd rather than cron (which has been deprecated since OSX 10.8).

[0] http://duckdns.org [1] https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/28255

+1 for freedns.afraid.org ... you can use one of the existing/open entries, you can put up your own domain for yours and others' use (did this for bbs.io, though I nuke entries that aren't bbs related), or you can pay for private use of your own domain. Works great overall.

Another +1 for freedns.afraid.org. I used them for years on my home FreeBSD gateway serving my domain on a dynamic IP, and didn't once have an issue. I think I only emailed the owner once or twice about some small matter, but he responded both times politely and quickly. For a free service, pretty impressive. Highly worth supplying a donation I would say if you use it.

I use https://freedns.afraid.org/. I appreciate that they support a URL that you can cURL, but I've never actually needed that, as Comcast never changes my IP address (although they're allowed to do so, I've had the same address for at least 3 years). Personally, I just use a subdomain on one of the domains they manage, and use a CNAME on my own domain to point to that.

Cloudflare also works (you don't have enable routing through cloudflare). They have an api for updating you IP too.

I personally like dns.he.net. Hurricane Electric is great. The catch? Limit to 50 second level domains.

Rackspace offers DNS with all cloud accounts and doesn't charge for it. 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.

You're getting professionally-run DNS servers, distributed with anycast.

Route 53 is also really cheap if you're an AWS kind of guy/gal for 50 cents a domain. The usage charges are beyond low (think 1 cent) for smaller sites.

Route 53 seems like a way to go with their GeoDNS ability and bunch of cool other features. To bad Dyn.com goes all paid though...

Has anyone compared Route53 with the new Google Cloud DNS? https://developers.google.com/cloud-dns/

I'm interested in differences feature-wise.

I havent seen a point by point comparison. Feature set, and even the API, are basically identical for now.

This is true. Although we do appreciate folks using other Rackspace services along with the free DNS. ;)

Linode too offers DNS with their accounts, which i've used and been happy with ... https://library.linode.com/dns-manager

They also offer API access (haven't used that yet) https://www.linode.com/api/dns

For what it's worth, if you use namecheap.com as your DNS registrar then you have this type of service already for free.

If you don't use namecheap, then you're doing it wrong ;)

On top of that they let you do it for free even if they aren't your registrar.

Cool, glad you mentioned this! I've used namecheap for a while and never noticed this feature! This will save me the trouble of having an outside service for DDNS.

For anyone else looking for this feature, log in to namecheap.com and click Manage Domains, click the domain you want to use DDNS with, then look for the Dynamic DNS link on the left menu under Miscellaneous.

I decided to switch to Namecheap just for this feature. Their domain interface isn't fantastic (it's good enough), but it allows me to consolidate all my DNS management there, plus I don't have to use extra services to update my hostnames, AND ddclient supports their API directly.

I know it's not strictly NameCheap's fault, but I moved all my DNS off of their servers after the recent DDOS had them down for hours.

Same. At work we had a high traffic website using namecheap DNS and we had to transfer to Route 53 to avoid the chance of another DDoS.

+1 for namecheap. You don't even have to pay for anything. I started using DDNS at Dyn and then ended up registering a bunch of domain names. Now I'm going to move them to Namecheap which already does my DNS (for free) and now DDNS.

I feel sorry for those people who have routers that only have built-in support for DynDNS. :(

That's where curl-based solutions are nice. Local cron job and done.

I feel sorry for people whose routers aren't running OpenWRT, PFSense, or some other easily upgradable modern firmware that's free of backdoors.

I'm using OpenWRT on my routerstation pro for my business connection, and an asus router with a TomatoUSB variant at home. Lots of options.

Unfortunately many (including mine) are not compatible

You know, because there can never be a backdoor or unknown security flaw in OpenWRT, PFSense or some other modern firmware.

Hey, great snarky reply.

Of course, in your haste to post a reddit-style sarcastic comment, you missed or glossed over the fact that free software such as OpenWRT or PFSense can be audited and patched by the public, and is not controlled by some corporation under undue influence by the NSA.

Oops! Better luck next time!

Sure the software can, theoretically be audited. But 1) Requires someone actually auditing software. Which judging by the state of OpenSSL flaws, we're doing a shit-tier job at. and 2) Requires people patching the "internet of things" cringe - which we've also seen isn't happening. Furthermore, most of the devices are dependent on closed source drivers for wireless devices.

And you're still just hoping the compromise isn't at the hardware level, because then you're truly up a creek.

Hell, we don't have access to the baseband software in our cellphones or the SIM chip, which can happily take control of the application processor and do what it needs to do, yet we all clamor around the fact that Android is Open and thusly Auditable and that makes it automatically superior in every way.

With enough eyes all bugs are shallow. But nobody's actually looking at the software, so bugs live on, and the big boogie man NSA can still be anywhere and everywhere.

There are Eyes In Your Radio. They're not going anywhere.

Funny enough, I put a lot of work into a OpenWRT dyndns update script. I wonder what ever happened to that code.

Actually, I've been wondering lately, just how common are router compromises? I ask because I have a Synology unit that was infected with some pretty insidious malware just by being out on the open internet and having a slightly out-of-date OS version. Since it's now easily possible to scan the entire IPv4 address space, it makes me wonder if having out-of-date firmware would basically guarantee a hacked router these days.

If it is common, its likely those doing it want it to remain a secret... so not sure its possible to get a good estimate.

It's not fear of backdoors that make me run a specific router.

If I want free wifi access around the country (via BT Openzone) then I need to run BT's router (which includes the magic to run a separate managed public Wifi access point via BT Fon).

It's annoying, but I can live with it (especially when they get around to upgrading my cabinet to FTTC and I get 60Mbps/20Mbps).

I'm in the same situation, but my FON router sits behind my main router and isolated from my internal network. It still shares Internet access just fine :)

Are you on Infinity (FTTC)? I've heard various stories about people on FTTC getting slower speeds with anything other then the latest Homehub.

Oh, I'm not actually in the UK at all, I just meant I also need to keep a FON router connected.

In that case, I assume the best option would be to put a decent router behind the Homehub (configuring the latter in bridge mode or similar) and then treating all traffic beyond the inner router as public.

Yup - this is the situation I'm in. My ISP requires a specific modem/router combo. As an alternative, I'm going to switch to running a client on my machine.

Yeah, that's why I still used the service even when they went more annoying. I guess I'll need to finish the work I started on moving to an alternative solution.

I started paying them a couple years ago for my DynDNS service, and have had no trouble in that time. I'm glad they chose to keep the service rather than shutting it down. And I'm especially glad to see them charging a small fee for a valuable service, rather than running it for free: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/

Yeah, I thought about switching to a different provider for a few minutes but the time it would take is worth more than $20 to me. Plus, their free service has been working perfectly for years, so why switch now?

IMO they could have handled the transition to non-free better. But every time they took away some of the free stuff, you have seen popular outrage. They pissed off lots of people that could have been potential customers and I was one of them.

Their lowest price plan is 25$ per year. If I only would want the most basic feature, that is having 1 or 2 dynamic ip addresses bound to a specific DNS entry (not even wildcard or email redirection), that is too much. I would have gladly paid 5$ for that even if only to get rid of the 30 day renewal routine.

But when the time came for me to register my own domain, I didn't want DynDNS to do it. I've seen how they treated me when I was a non-paying customer.

I totally agree with your sentiment. But I have to say a 'non-paying customer' isn't a customer at all, by definition. ;)

I have been using their free service for a very long time, so this is a big disappointing.

However, I recently bought a new ASUS router that includes an ASUS dynamic DNS service built in (asuscomm.com) that works really well.

There's an app that allows me to wake up my computers remotely via my Android phone, and I can VPN into my network to do SSH/Remote Desktop.

The nice thing about DynDNS is that it was widely supported by routers, including DD-WRT and Tomato.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546300

http://en.gandi.net/ offers free secondary dns with all domains you buy/renew through them.

Most hosting providers and domain sellers will provide this for free.

CloudFlare also offers free DNS (which you can use with a patched version of ddclient). CloudFlare uses anycast, so it's fast, and as a DoS protection company, they tend to be more reliable than many of the other free options.

Given that I just left gandi after 2 days: Please be sure that you want to do business with them and that you've thoroughly checked their offerings.

I'm kinda guilty on part two and can answer part one with a resounding 'no'.

Their no bullshit claim didn't apply here, I cannot and won't recommend them.

Can you elaborate? I own 2 domains through them and have been nothing but happy with them so far.

I have two domains with them as well and can't complain, but their UI doesn't exactly shout "trustworthy".

What was your issue? I've contemplated consolidating all of my domains/certs with them and have no issues so far but maybe I'm missing something?

See above - especially if you're not incorporated (Granted, on this board that's probably the minority)

I was also unhappy with their customer service from an incident a couple years back and won't be using them again. Not really sure why they get so many recommendations here.

Is this on their hosting or DNS offerings?

Given that Gandi's reputation is outstanding, your experience seems quite odd. Can you elaborate?

Following up on my experience:

Was looking for a registrar for my domains that supports DNSSEC (for the TLDs that support it, obviously) and wanted to leave my previous (really cheap one).

I heard about their 'no bullshit' slogan and their rather good reputation.

Searching online confirmed that

- Gandi supports DNSSEC for the domains I care about (.sh, .de) [1]

- Gandi supports all my (cc)TLDs (.name, .de, .sh, .net) [2]

- Gandis prices are reasonable [2]

Pay attention: [2] lists all their supported domains with prices. If you expand "Asia/Oceania" you'll find .sh for example. With a price. What isn't obvious right away unless you're into hovering madly: Each row is a link. That's important.

So, prices good, good reputation, dnssec support -> Let's transfer all my domains in one go. Payed, worked - but the .sh domain failed with no sensible error message at all. Retried. Contacted customer support and waited. Meanwhile I was billed for the rest and parts of my domains were transfered already. At no point I got a reasonable explanation in their interface. CSR replies "Yeah, bad luck. That's a corporate domain. We have a list of domains for corporations only (now go and click a link on [2]), you'd have to talk to the corporate sales team". Contacted them, waited, waited, random bullshit (sorry, with a slogan like that..) as reply ("Just subscribe to our corporate services for a while, register the domains while they're active" - "Yeah, I'm a private person and your website doesn't let me do that" - "Awwwwww, bad luck then").

Denied my incoming transfers, moved the ones that already made it out. My Gandi account is useless and empty. The denied transfers though? They refunded that part of my bill - to my "Gandi prepaid account"...

Short version:

- crappy UI

- half of their TLD support is for corporate clients only, "PLEASE TAKE MY MONEY" won't help (I tried)

- the support wasn't helpful (enough) and the corporate sales guys confused - they obviously didn't look at my account even once before answering

- the refund is a joke

I'm glad I left early.

Sorry for the rant, this is 'fresh' (i.e. the refund happened yesterday, the rest of the ordeal just last week) and so I'm still a bit agitated. I really tried to like them and don't think that I was overly complicated in my requirements.

1: https://www.icann.org/en/news/in-focus/dnssec/deployment

2: https://www.gandi.net/domain

So, to keep this honest because these threads are still alive and active: In the end (like, just now) Gandi refunded the money - I have no pre-paid account anymore, after complaining they returned the money to me instead.

So pain points:

- user interface

- half of their TLDs are inaccessible, even for inbound transfers of the respective owner

- corporate sales team was .. useless and these business rules really don't smell like 'no bullshit' to me

Upsides (to be fair):

- support replied via mail to all my requests and was generally friendly

- I got my money back in the end (for transfers that didn't happen, so nothing lost on their side either, this is not a courtesy imo)

Gandi also offers free primary DNS. This in itself is nice, but even better is the fact that they have an API to update said DNS. This makes it possible to implement your own dynamic DNS without the need to cname through a third party dynamic dns provider. Just add a simple script to your router, run it at regular intervals (cron is your friend here) and you're set. You'll need an API key for this, these can be had for free through the dashboard.

I have used them for years under their free model. I signed up for 2 years instantly after receiving an email regarding this. In my mind, they have earned it: A great service and free for all these years. I think this is a great way to move from free to paid services.

Hurricane electric offers free dynDNS, free DNS, and also free IPv6 tunneling. https://dns.he.net/ You can even set up an IPv6 tunnel for a dynamic IP and have it update dynamically.

+1 to this. I've only touched very basic usage, but it was easy. And it's HE... big name and comes with reliability.

>And it's HE... big name and comes with reliability

Our experience is the opposite. LA to Denver and at least once a week Nagios goes batshit because packetloss pops up to 8% on and off for hours. Partly this is because our unfortunate choice of ISP, IPTP, doesn't understand how BGP works and localprefs HE over everything. But consensus seems to be that they're just overloaded.

I suppose selling for a third or less of other ISPs tends to increase network demand.

Inevitable... moved off DynDNS earlier this year in favor of Amazon's Route53. DNS bills went down 99%... and Amazon has been great.

What have your bills looked like, if you don't mind my asking? I've been running a VM server on a business cable connection, but thinking on getting rid of that in favor of a few cloud/hosted systems, and virtual DNS.

I always ran a homebrew dynamic dns service on my domains from whatever VPS provider I used at the time. Basically create a new A record on your domain (ex: home.example.com), then run one of these scripts periodically on your home machine to keep that A record updated. Here are are the two that are still relevant:

Digital Ocean: http://pushingkarma.com/notebook/dynamic-dns-your-home-pc-us...

Linode: http://pushingkarma.com/notebook/setup-dynamic-dns-using-lin...

recently, I think thru a show HN post on here, I discovered and started using http://hopper.pw. works great/some c00l commandline features etc

I'm using it and it works very well. You can also add custom domains if your dns server supports the nsupdate API.

dyndns has been getting progressively more hostile to free users for years. I thought it was ridiculous years ago when I switched to no-ip.org, I'm surprised that anyone has held on this long.

Yea dunno why I held on so long with their annoying monthly or whatever 'click here to keep account active' email (with subsequent upsell)

Moved to dtdns.com now - its free..

What hostility or ridiculousness did you see?

I've been on Dyn forever, as a free user to keep a host entry for one remote, nonprofit dynamic-IP server. Starting exactly a year ago, once per month they sent me an email with a link I'd click to keep my free hostname(s) active. Seemed reasonable.

I used to be on EasyDNS and they got acquired by DynDNS many years back. They really have been trying to kick off the free users for a long time. Anyone who's hung on til now is a survivor.

They dropped from 5 free hostnames to 2, in 2010. And they have been enforcing this "log into your account monthly" since at least that time. Not 1 year, but at least 4 years or more. That's how I lost my free hostname - because I missed a month. Thanks Dyn!

Same issue here but I have set a reminder for every 2 weeks and luckily haven't missed.

I have my parents' old router set to use this - and really have no good way out.

I guess I give 'em money. Oh well.

They also removed a bunch of domains from their free tier a few years ago. This may help them drive some revenue in the short term, but long term I it is going to make customer acquisition a lot harder. I just switched over to no-ip.com...

What exactly do you expect from a free service? Seems like they're doing more than enough to accommodate you, a user who makes them nothing while costing them something.

Fair enough.

What I expect is that a company should either offer a free service and serve those customers well, or not offer it at all.

Offering a free service, but then being hostile to those people each and every month, is the worst of the options they could take. My 2 cents.

Lots of other companies, including my domain registrar, offer this service for free too.

everydns, not easydns.

You're right.

They were one of those services that would repeatedly make the free service worse, in an attempt to get you to upgrade.

At first they changed it so you need to touch your account once every 30 days to keep it active. Using the automated updater counted as touching it.

Then they changed it where the automated updater didn't count anymore, so now you needed to log in manually every 30 days.

Once I didn't get their email, and they purged my whole account. I had to recreate it as a new account, and by now they had severely restricted the list of domains that were available for the free service, so I couldn't get the old domain back.

I realize it was a free account, and what not to do with gifted horses, but sending you an email every 30 days and purging your account if you don't click on it within a very short window is a little too annoying for me.

In a way this step now is more honest. If you don't want the free users, don't offer the free service.

Agreed. I guess they were trying to boot people out gradually, without causing a fuss. But that means many of their free customers lost their domains as a surprise, instead of moving to another service intentionally.

> Once I didn't get their email, and they purged my whole account. I had to recreate it as a new account, and by now they had severely restricted the list of domains that were available for the free service, so I couldn't get the old domain back.

This exact same thing happened to me a few years back - didn't even notice the email, so I lost a name I'd had for years. I get that it wasn't really 'mine' per se; I might have paid for it anyway, since their service at the time was hardly expensive, but cancelling my stuff abruptly seemed... well, not exactly dishonest, I suppose. Let's go with 'distasteful.' I moved over to afraid.org's free dns service, and never looked back. It's sad it took Dyn so long to come out and admit they weren't interested in free users. I hope their new service works out for them, and that their free users are happier in their new homes.

When companies stop focusing on innovation, they start focusing on the bottom line so anything without a easily visible revenue stream gets cut.

aka short-sighted thinking is the final stage of most business before sale to the chop shop.

My memory may be deceiving me but I recall the founder of DynDNS posted in the HN comments on his reasoning of taking outside money and shifting the biz model after initial growth via bootstrapping. Hopefully someone else recalls and links the HN page.

I have, purely because it was easier (in the last few months) to just keep clicking on a button every 14 days or so[1] than to do all the work to find out what free DNS solutions my router supports, updating the configs (or implementing a cronjob/API call) and then finding everywhere I've buried my dyndns address so that it can use the new one.

Of course I'll have to do that work now, but you never know if Dyn will change their mind so I'll hold out until right near the bitter end.

A single IP of my home router just isn't worth $25 a year IMHO. There are plenty of other companies that offer the service for free so I'll just leave Dyn with (a probably undeserved[2]) negative opinion of them for kicking me out.

1. It was hardly difficult, they sent you a reminder each time that contained the link to click on!

2. Not entirely sure how long I've used Dyn for, the earliest email I can find is one about my host expiring back in February 2006.

Previous thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7546300

Google now offers Cloud DNS, conceptually similar to Amazon Route53. Has a pretty nice CLI and REST API, and serves using Anycast. https://developers.google.com/cloud-dns/

A little known fact: If you have a Brazilian domain, you have free DNS at Registro.br, the official country register.

I stopped to use dyndns since they started doing it some years ago. The interface is a lot better, and you will have quicker responses for your Brazilian visitors.

The real problem is routers have hardwired dyndns settings; in many cases with no other options.

Actually, there are programs you can install on a pc behind your router, that will perform the same function, i.e. Pinging some dyndns provider other than router's builtin one. i think I used one by namecheap in windows exe form.

I haven't found anything that beats the ease of use of LuaDNS [1] though. Edit a simple lua script, git push and done!

[1] http://www.luadns.com/

Might I recommend gandi and also http://code.google.com/p/gandi-automatic-dns/

Switched to No-IP, took a couple minutes. No big deal, I've never really liked DynDNS anyways, they were far to aggressive in trying to force upgrades.

What DNS hosting providers can you recommend?

Preferably with an API or other means to programmatically make changes to zones. Bonus points for SRV and TXT records support.

if you just need DNS: cloudflare. if you want the dynamic IP redirection that DynDNS offers: check out NoIP. My favorite alternative.

We've been using dnsmadeeasy[1] for years. There's something dated about their interface/presentation, but the service has been rock solid and fast since day one.

[1] http://www.dnsmadeeasy.com

Came here to say the same. DNSMadeEasy doesn't feel _fancy_, but it has always worked great for us. Solid service. Highly recommended.

Edit: Not that it matters much, but it was Textdrive's (née Joyant) recommendation back in '04 that got me to sign up. If anything, they've been around a while.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060427025139/http://forum.text...

+1 for dnsmadeeasy - they have fanatical support, they actually know dns inside and out

I've switched to using http://entrydns.net some time back. Worked out good so far.

https://dns.he.net/ is pretty good ( run by Hurricane Electric )

Is anyone here hosting their own dyndns setup?

Not yet, but this looks interesting: https://github.com/asmaps/hopper.pw

Yeah, I wrote a little http endpoint that I access with curl in a cron job. The server updates my master DNS git repo and which then updates the data in Route 53.

The DNS stuff is based on a Perl module I wrote called Net::DNS::Create [1]. It allows you to use a little DSL-ish language to create your DNS entries, then compile them into whatever DNS backend you want (Bind, TinyDNS, and Route53 are supported out of the box, and all have been used in production at some point). A quick example of what this might look like is here: https://github.com/caldwell/net-dns-create/blob/master/creat...

[1] http://search.cpan.org/~david/Net-DNS-Create-v0.10.0/lib/Net...

Yes, I did (and will do again).

Previously I used bind/named for a subdomain, something like d.someshortdomainofmine.tld for a dynamic namespace and updated entries below with a cronjob calling

  nsupdate -k /path/to/a/key << _EOF_
  server my.server.here
  zone d.someshortdomainofmine.tld
  update delete foo.d.someshortdomainofmine.tld
  update add foo.d.someshortdomainofmine.tld 300 AAAA ipv6here
  show
  send
  _EOF_

which worked just fine and took roughly 20min to get right, including the DNS entries. I'm currently moving to NSD and I'll implement something similar there.

not anymore

For anyone that happens to use PointDNS DNS hosting (it's free for a single domain I believe), I've written a small script to be called from cron.

https://github.com/vortura/point-dyndns

I have a feeling that we're going to start seeing a lot of this post LogMeIn's cancellation of free services.

You can pretty much do the same thing with an OpenVPN server anyways.

great posts here. marking it for later

Please use something like Pinboard, Pocket, Bitly, or Instapaper.

You put everything in one list, and the comment section stays on point :)

Links:

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https://bitly.com/

http://getpocket.com/

https://www.instapaper.com/

If you just upvote it, it'll appear in /saved, no need to comment :)

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