Hi everyone,
Edit2: I bought a domain (1,50€ p.m.) from a European service which also offers dynDNS functionality. Just needed to adjust my NGINX config and generated new SSL-certificates via Certbot. I also built a script that only issues the update URL if the actually IP has changed. The system has been running flawlessy now for a couple of days already. No outages or any other connection issues. Learning: even though the dynDNS functionality should work stable in theory (since there is not much going on), the dynDNS service provider actually plays a big role in terms of reliability.
a couple of friends and I have a Jellyfin server running which is exposed to the internet via a reverse-proxy and https by using a free dynDNS provider.
The setup is working fine besides the dynDNS provider. We constantly face connection issues, making the dynamic DNS functionality very unreliable.
So I started looking into possible solutions and one particular would be to buy an own domain which would only cost a few bucks each month. With this I could keep the current setup and would just need to change the domain (and possibly the SSL certificate). I found a provider over which I could buy (rent?) a domain and which also provides dynDNS functionality. But I am not too sure if I understood this correctly:
- if I have an own domain, why would I need the additional dynDNS functionality? I would guess that I would just continue updating your server's IP address to the domain name like we are doing now
- can the provider over which I rent the domain with servers in my country actually see what our traffic is? Especially since we are streaming our movies etc.
- is there a better way of obtaining and setting up your own domain also in terms of privacy and reliability than with a bigger company offering such services?
Thanks a lot for your feedback!
Edit: An important fact I forgot to add in my main post is that during these issues, the general server connection should be fine since it is located at a friends house and his internet connection is unaffected (e.g. we could still talk in Discord normally and he had no internet issues whatsoever)
I am using dynv6.com. The reason I blame the DNS resolution is because when I have issues connecting (as if the domain is not available), it does not mean that my friends cannot connect either. The server is at a friends house who has a fiber connection and who has no issues when we habe trouble connecting again. I could be totally wrong, but to me it sounds like dynv6 has some troubles.
I also have a script running, which constantly updates dynv6 with our current IP address.
Well, it can't hurt to cross it off. You don't need to get a domain from a registrar that offers dynamic DNS, you just need to register a domain (or try another dynamic DNS like the other user suggested) and use a DNS provider that is free and offers an API. I personally use Cloudflare, there are plenty of guides for setting up a dynamic record on CF.
For registering a domain you can use an affordable registrar, I'm a Porkbun customer - for a
.comdomain it's like $11 for a year. No need to spend monthly.I looked into porkbun and it seems that they already offer a Cloudflare API for dynamic DNS. Why did you choose to separately use Cloudflare? Bit otherwise it looks promising to give it a try.
I used to use dynv6, but I started having issues about 2 years ago. DNS records would just stop resolving until I deleted and recreated them. Their forum has been broken for years, so there's no way to get support.
If you only need 5 records or less, give FreeDNS a try.