Baked-in DDNS Providers

I recently purchased this Pepwave Surf SOHO MK3 router. It is fully deployed, in service, and doing a great job. During recent weeks I also was looking at using a DDNS service to provide remote access to my home network, if needed. The natively supported list of providers in this router includes changeip.com, dyndns.org, and no-ip.org. I could also choose DNS-O-Matic, but that would entail setting up 2 accounts, not just one. So I looked at the 1st 3 providers. Of these only changeip.com seems to have a really usable free dynamic DNS account: I don’t need more than a single hostname, nor a custom domain, so the most basic account should be enough. No-ip.org allows a free setup, but automatically removes any free hostname unless verified in use every 30 days (not practical). When I looked at Dyndns.org, it automatically set up a charge of $55 per year for the most basic setup I could do. This left me with changip.com, which so far seems to fill the need.

I think this list of DDNS providers needs some review and should probably include more options for providers not employing the tactics of Dyndns.org and no-ip.org, which I find similar to bait-and-switch marketing. I understand they need to have an income stream to support their organizations, but many other products and services manage by providing a paid upgrade option, without the tactics of these 2 outfits - just my opinion.

If you are using InControl2 then you can add Peplink’s own DDNS service to your list.

You pick the preferred name (say, my-router), and Peplink provides an FQDN of my-router.mypep.link

Cheers,

Z

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nsupdate.info works great for me, no renewal BS to deal with either.

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DynDNS is owned by Oracle and soon after Oracle purchased the company the prices went way up. Do not even consider using them. I pay for noip.com because I need DDNS on a few systems.

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Not using InControl, not doing anything complicated, and I have no device on my network that I want to use as a DDNS update client. I am presuming that the Surf SOHO only acts as client for the list of services shown in the drop-down list. If this assumption is incorrect, I’d love to hear about it. The documentation is not revealing of much on this topic.

No, you have it right, I think. Very straight forward and very easy to implement. FWIW, we use no-ip.com. No “tactics” – we pay $25/year for up to 25 hosts and it has worked perfectly for us for a number of years. We are willing to pay for good, reliable service. If you are aware of a firm you like and that is willing to give its services away without “bait and switch tactics,” as you refer to them, I’d suggest submitting a suggestion to Peplink to add them to the list. The forum here is a good means to do that.

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I switched from DynDNS to NoIP over a year ago. It has worked well for me. I’m using it to point a domain name to a web server behind a dynamic IP address. It costs a little, but no surprises.

No intent to criticize what anyone else is using here. Just think that when 2 out of 3 choices that the router can update directly are discouraging or no longer allowing free accounts for the simple cases, it’s time for a review of the list.

Also, what does the “Others” choice do? Can’t find anything describing it in the User manual or context help in the router itself. Does anyone know?

Since no one has posted with information about the “Other” setting, I decided to run some experiments
M goals for DDNS: simple setup, Free account (can’t justify more right now), Only need 1 host/domain, Router to act as update agent. Yes, I run Linux Mint, but I don’t want to complicate their configuration with such a task, when the router should be able to handle that by itself. Same for my Synology NAS - I have been looking at its outbound connections to try to keep it fairly confined. Below are the results of my experiments for any who are interested.

Setup test accounts with the following:

Appears that free accounts here are no longer offered. Learned that Oracle now owns this service, so no surprise. Skipped this one.

Free account available, but free account hosts are deleted unless verified in use every 30 days: too inconvenient for me.
changeip.com
Free account available, good list of available domains, router was able to act as update agent. Later discovered that router can also update this service using the “Other” setting. Don’t really care for their Account management web portal.
Dns-O-Matic.com
Free account available, added the changeip.com account, was successfully updated by router. Later discovered it won’t operate w/ ydns.eu: issue open for at least 2 years, not fixed. Then discovered that dns-o-matic.com and OpenDNS are now owned by Cisco, so no surprise that issues are ignored. Cisco is famous for this behavior. Won’t continue using this service.
ydns.eu
Free account created, only 1 available domain. Successfully updated IP via bash script, but not using dns-o-matic.com (see above). Also failed to update under router’s “Other” setting, but documentation is limited.
dynu.com
Free account created, good list of available domains. Successfully updated IP using router under “Other” setting, also using dns-o-matic.com.
now-dns.com
Free account created, good list of available domains. Management website is good, simple, clean. Failed to update IP using router under “Other” setting. Did not test dns-o-matic.com.
clouDns.net
Looked at this service, did not test. I’m sure it would work with a script updater on my Linux Mint unit, possibly run on my Synology NAS. But the documentation and support is more technical than any other service I looked at. It might work with my router as updater or not - it is supported on routers using DD-Wrt firmware. Not for the uninitiated.

Conclusions:
Of the 3 services that are directly supported for updating by the router, only 1 appears to offer a usable free account for those that fit that category.
I was able to configure 2 services for update using the “Other” option. There may be a number of other services that will also work, would take more experiments to see. But there are usable options for those that fit this use case. To use the “Other” setting, will usually need to review the service’s API or other documentation.