Setup DDNS with FreeDNS

This guide if for those that want a domain name for their private server/network but doesn’t have a static IP-address. No worries, this can be accomplished through a Dynamic Domain Name System (DDNS). There are many free suppliers av DDNS but they all work in a similar fashion, below is a guide for using FreeDNS.

Note, If you do have a static IP-address and a hosting provider:

The best thing is probably just to configure a CNAME DNS setting with your hosting provider and point a sub domain to your static IP-address. Example:

Domain Type Value
home.filegott.se CNAME 85.230.180.186

Depending on your hosting provider this can be done differently usually through a GUI.

Setup DDNS (using FreeDNS)

  1. Go to freedns.afraid.org and get a user account.
  2. Log in and create a DDNS by pressing “Dynamic DNS” and scroll down and press “[add]”:
    Picture 1. FreeDNS add DDNS.

    Fill in the fields and press “Save!”. In this example i created the DDNS filegott.crabdance.com.

  3. Update DDNS with a new IP-address. There are many ways of doing this but maybe simplest is using:
    http://[USERNAME]:[PASSWORD]@freedns.afraid.org/nic/update?hostname=filgott.crabdance.se&myip=85.230.180.123
    Verify through FreeDNS webpage the IP-address got updated.
  4. Setup automated update of IP-address. When doing this we don’t want to use the unencrypted HTTP url above but instead a safer HTTPS url, maybe through curl or Wget. There are example scripts ready to be downloaded from the page:

    Picture 2. FreeDNS download different update scripts.

    Scheduling can be done through Task Scheduler (Windows) or crontab (linux). I actually used my “router” as it already had support for FreeDNS.

Extra credit: CNAME a prettier domain name as DDNS (if you have a hosting provider)

My hosting provider doesn’t provide a DDNS service but they do enable users to create their own sub-domain and link them to other addresses:

Domain Type Value
home.filegott.se CNAME filegott.crabdance.com
unifi.filegott.se CNAME filegott.crabdance.com

So now by using the CNAME the browser will still display home.filegott.se but will be using the DDNS to get the correct IP. As you noticed I even added another domain that points to the same DDNS (IP-Address), why you ask? This is because I have NGINX reverse-proxy listening at filegott.crabdance.com that directs the request differently depending on the domain name used in request url.

2 thoughts on “Setup DDNS with FreeDNS”

    1. No, it’s for free! They did sometimes send an email (every 3-6 month) wanting you to login to your account.
      They haven’t done so for me for a very long time, maybe they have removed that requirement…

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