DynDNS to begin charging

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KevinC25

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DynDNS to begin charging

#1

Post by KevinC25 » Tue Apr 15, 2014 5:49 pm

Like many other users, I have been using DynDNS for free to communicate with my htpc for Ceton MMC. I see DynDNS will no longer be providing free service after May 8. Is anybody using an alternative free service they recommend?

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Scallica

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#2

Post by Scallica » Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:01 pm

No-ip.com. You have to click an email link every 30 days, but at least it's free.
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3rob3

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#3

Post by 3rob3 » Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 pm

+1. I also have been using DynDNS for years but switched to No-ip.....so far so good!

If you have a Windows Home Server running you can also use that built in service (.homeserver.com).

KevinC25

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#4

Post by KevinC25 » Wed Apr 16, 2014 12:13 am

Thanks to you both, I will give no-ip a try!

barnabas1969

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#5

Post by barnabas1969 » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:24 pm

I've been using no-ip for a while too. When you click the link in the monthly e-mail to confirm that you're still using no-ip, you have to enter a CAPTCHA code to prove that you're a human. However, if you go login to your no-ip account (instead of clicking the link in the e-mail), you can "update your host" without CAPTCHA and it renews your account for another 30 days.

I keep saying to myself that I'm going to write a script to automate that, but I haven't gotten around to it.

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mcewinter

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#6

Post by mcewinter » Wed Apr 16, 2014 6:53 pm

3rob3 wrote:If you have a Windows Home Server running you can also use that built in service (.homeserver.com).

That's good advice. Better than maintaining a free account elsewhere.

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#7

Post by prouton » Fri Apr 18, 2014 7:40 am

Has anyone here used duckdns.org?

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#8

Post by jasonbtx » Fri Apr 18, 2014 7:56 pm

It's not that expensive . I got tired of having to click here and fill this in every month.

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machausta

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#9

Post by machausta » Fri Apr 18, 2014 8:29 pm

I have used darktech.org (free) for several years.

KevinC25

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#10

Post by KevinC25 » Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:21 pm

machausta wrote:I have used darktech.org (free) for several years.
darkteck or dtdns.com looks good. Do they require you to do anything regularly to keep the free account active, like no-ip requiring you to log in once a month? It wasn't clear to me from their website. Thanks!

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#11

Post by kingwr » Mon Apr 21, 2014 5:22 pm

Did you get a notice or something that DynDNS will being charging? I can still log in and see my active, free service and I don't see any notification on the site that the free service will be discontinued. I also have not received any notice that it is going away via email. I must be missing something.

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mcewinter

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#12

Post by mcewinter » Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:02 pm

Yeah, I thought it only applied to new customers moving forward.

RyC

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#13

Post by RyC » Mon Apr 21, 2014 6:23 pm

No, unless you have a "VIP" account, it'll start charging. They already cut off new free accounts a while ago and tried to kill off "grandfathered" accounts by making you click a link every month. Now they're just flat out killing free accounts.

Here's the blog post: http://dyn.com/blog/why-we-decided-to-s ... -accounts/

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#14

Post by barnabas1969 » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:06 pm

Well, I played around with powershell today, trying to create a script to automate the host update... but I haven't got it working (yet). I don't use powershell very often, but it seems to have a very good web client built-in. Understandably, the No-IP website has measures to try to block this type of access. I might give it a go using a different tool sometime in the future.

EDIT: I found cURL for Windows. I'll give that a try. I've been getting real familiar with it on a UNIX system lately for a project at work.

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mcewinter

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#15

Post by mcewinter » Mon Apr 21, 2014 7:54 pm

RyC wrote:No, unless you have a "VIP" account, it'll start charging. They already cut off new free accounts a while ago and tried to kill off "grandfathered" accounts by making you click a link every month. Now they're just flat out killing free accounts.

Here's the blog post: http://dyn.com/blog/why-we-decided-to-s ... -accounts/
Well good for them if they can make money on what people can get for free. I guess my WHS address is the logical approach in my case.

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machausta

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#16

Post by machausta » Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:43 pm

KevinC25 wrote:
machausta wrote:I have used darktech.org (free) for several years.
darkteck or dtdns.com looks good. Do they require you to do anything regularly to keep the free account active, like no-ip requiring you to log in once a month? It wasn't clear to me from their website. Thanks!
Not to my knowledge, I use a program that updates the IP if/when it changes.

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#17

Post by glugglug » Tue Apr 22, 2014 2:34 am

Asus routers (at least the recent ones) include an asuscomm.com domain.

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Crash2009

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#18

Post by Crash2009 » Tue Apr 22, 2014 2:57 am

glugglug wrote:Asus routers (at least the recent ones) include an asuscomm.com domain.
My Asus router is a couple years old. The asus domain was included (as you say) and there are several DDNS services embedded in the RT-N56U.
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barnabas1969

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#19

Post by barnabas1969 » Tue Apr 22, 2014 1:31 pm

Just so you don't misunderstand... my router automatically updates the WAN IP address with no-ip. What I'm trying to do is automate the host update so that I don't get those e-mails every 30 days asking me to click a link in order to keep my DNS hostname active.

I started with PowerShell, but I'm not real familiar with it... and it doesn't provide enough feedback for me to figure out what I'm doing wrong. cURL will dump the entire HTML response from the web server (with headers and everything if I choose), so it should give me enough info to work with.

If I can get this working, I'll post my script here. It's not too much trouble to click the link in the e-mail every 30 days, but it has bitten me in the past when I missed the e-mail for some reason.

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Crash2009

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#20

Post by Crash2009 » Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:51 pm

That one is beyond my peg rate. Is this what you are trying to do? http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Dynamic_D ... _No-IP_DNS

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