Dialing home
HOW TO CREATE A PERSONAL WEB ADDRESS FOR YOUR HOME NETWORK.
HAVE YOU EVER thought about setting up a home server of some kind? Perhaps your own Minecraft server, a remote control server, or maybe a private VPN that lets you remotely dial into your home network and securely access your other devices. If that’s the case, then you may have run across one big problem: dynamic IP addresses.
Even in 2020, most internet accounts don’t come with a fixed IP address. Every time you connect to your ISP, you’re assigned a new internet address. Sure, that IP address may stick around for a long time if you don’t have any power, router or internet outages; but eventually it’s going to change. If you turn your router off and on again, or lose internet even for a moment – boom, new IP address.
That makes dialling home from across the internet an issue, since you can’t be sure what your “phone number” (ie. your IP address) is going to be.
This is where dynamic DNS (DDNS) comes in. DDNS is a service that gives you a permanent URL that you can use instead of the IP address. So when you want to contact your home network, you don’t have to know your current IP address: you just enter a fixed URL (for example, myhomenetwork.no-ip.
com) that will always point to your home network.
A software agent, running somewhere on your home network, keeps the DDNS service apprised of your current home IP address. The DDNS service then updates the URL to always point to that IP address.
To give an example, say you want to set up your own private VPN service to dial into your home network remotely. In order to dial in, you normally would have to know the IP address of your home – and that IP address changes from time to time. But if you set up a DDNS service, you could configure your
VPN client to point at your DDNS URL instead, let’s say myhomenetwork.no-ip.com. That will always point it to your home network, regardless of what your current IP address is.
GETTING A DDNS ACCOUNT AND CREATING A URL
The first thing to do if you want to set up DDNS is to get an account with a DDNS provider. Some examples of providers with free services are shown in the sidebar, but for the purposes of our guide we’re going to be using No-IP – not because it’s our favourite (that would be FreeDNS), but because it’s the most widely supported by routers, along with Oracle’s non-free Dyn service.
If you plan on setting DDNS up on your router it may be your best option; but if you plan to use software, any of the other listed services will do.
To set up the service, just go to the website and create a new account. For No-IP, go to
no-ip.com, and create an account. Note your account details – you’ll need them later during setup.
Log into your account to access to the configuration dashboard. This is where you can create a URL (called a hostname) for your home network.
Now to create a hostname. Find the option to create a new hostname, then type in a name. What will happen is that the latter part of the URL is fixed by the service provider – you just provide the first bit. For example, No-IP URLs might end with ddns.net. So you could create the URL something.ddns.net, assuming that something is not already taken by somebody else (it’s kind of like creating a new Gmail address or gamer tag – you have
EVEN IN 2020, MOST INTERNET ACCOUNTS DON’T COME WITH A FIXED IP ADDRESS. EVERY TIME YOU CONNECT TO YOUR ISP, YOU’RE ASSIGNED A NEW INTERNET ADDRESS.
to keep trying until you find one nobody else is using).
Once you’ve created a hostname, make a note of it. That will be the permanent URL of your home network.
Now you have to set it up on your local network, so that the DDNS provider gets a constantly updated IP address that they can point the URL at. There are two ways you can set up DDNS on your home network. You can set it up on your router, assuming your router supports it; or you can install an agent – a small resident program that runs on a computer on your home network.
ROUTER SETUP
Setting DDNS up on your router is convenient. Your router is always on, and setup tends to be quite simple. However, your router must support the particular DDNS provider you’re using, and most have a very limited list of supported providers. Some don’t support DDNS at all.
Log onto your router’s administration. To set up DDNS on your router, find the DDNS settings. Different router makers put it in different settings – sometimes network, sometimes security (near the port forwarding settings). On Linksys, for example, you can find it under Security.
Enable DDNS, select your service provider, and enter your login details and hostname. The router should connect to the service and maintain the link. Done and done. You can now log off and start using your new URL, safe in the knowledge that your router is keeping it up to date.
IN SOFTWARE
In lieu of setting it up on a router, you can install an agent on one of your PCs. This is the more flexible option, but it will need a computer that is always-on – it’s a good idea to install it on the same device that you’re running your services from (for example, if you’re running a Minecraft server, install DDNS on the same device as the
Minecraft server).
The particular DDNS provider will have an app you can download and install. Grab the app, install it, and then run it. Many will have the option to run as a service (which means you can run it in the background, rather than having an active app on your Taskbar). You’ll have to enter your account username and password, as well as your hostname.
As long as it’s running, the software will be updating your DDNS provider with your current IP address. That way, the DDNS provider always knows what IP address to point the URL at.
And that’s that. You now have a permanent web address for your home network. This enables a whole host of other services (many of which we’re going to talk about in the coming months) and makes it that much easier to find your home network from anywhere on the world wide web.