I would like to host my own web server with a domain name I purchased but my public IP isn’t static.
I’m using DuckDNS, it has a plugin for pfSense / OpnSense.
If you only need public access to things like HTTP or SSH you don’t necessarily need to run dynamic ip and just setup Cloudflare Tunnels. So far I haven’t needed to put anything public that doesn’t run on the provided tunnels.
Where are the settings for these tunnels located in Cloudflare? I was looking around the website last night but didn’t have any luck.
It’s confusing. I think they are under zero trust now
Look under the Zero Trust category and then once there you’ll see another menu item called Access. There you’ll find Tunnels, in addition to Tunnels you can add an Application in the same Access menu to create policies that only allow certain clients to connect.
Cloudflare tunnels is the way to go for small self hosted content. You’re hiding behind their ddos protection and your IP / location remains hidden from end users.
Does it work for RDP?
Sort of? https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-apps/use-cases/rdp/ - I have no idea how to do it though.
I’ve had SSH and VNC sessions rendered in web pages with tunnels, but never RDP.
I would prefer to use TailScale (www.tailscale.com) for something like RDP though, much easier to configure / set up and again you’re hiding behind their infrastructure.
I host my own ddns server in a debian container https://wiki.debian.org/DDNS
Here we go down another rabbit hole… 😆
Right!!! Lmao 😂 same boat as ya lol
I use a Cloudflare tunnel rather than a dynamic DNS provider. Some in the self hosting community are opposed to Cloudflare, but I appreciate the tools they provide (especially Zero Trust so I can put my self hosted apps behind Okta).
+1 for tunnels, easy to use and no port forwarding required
I’ve been using freedns.afraid.org for about a year now.
I’ve also been on freedns.afraid.org for many years. Back when I switched from dyndns, it wasn’t possible to get Let’s Encrypt certificates on afraid.org’s domains, but that might have changed. I worked around it by taking a domain I already owned and using a CNAME to point it at my afraid.org domain.
I use Let’s Encrypt on my domains, but they’re domains that my afraid.org subdomains point to.
Does your domain provider have a DDNS service? I buy my domains from namecheap.com and use their DDNS service for exactly what you’re describing.
I have NameCheap as well. I found their Windows client after I made this post. I’m still curious is there are better services out there. It seems Cloudflare may have the best tools for security for a webserver, i.e. hiding the real IP address.
I use namecheap and dd client. Happy to share my config file if you need if.
Cloudflare has a lot of great tools and provides service to most of the internet. Some folks don’t like how much of internet traffic is routed though Cloudflare… sort of like Google and if that’s not a bother then it may be a good choice.
I use DuckDNS. There’s been only one outage for the ~2 years I’ve been using it and it’s free. I also use DuckDNS to acquire the SSL certificates for the reverse proxy.
How gave you set it up out of curiosity?
If you mean automatically update IP part, duckdns website has a very comprehensive guide.
If you mean getting a free SSL certificate, you can use acme.sh (this is what I used) which has integrated support for duckddns (To use let’s encrypt you need to use
--server letsencrypt
in your command)
I used duckdns for my jellyfin server, but after a week or so I started getting malicious site warnings from Firefox, and had to ‘accept the risk and continue’ every time. Ended up going back to noip. It’s a pain to renew every month, but I haven’t had any other problems with it.
What do you mean renew every month?
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You need to confirm each month that you’re still using that url if you’re in free tier. Otherwise it won’t be registered to you
I use noip as well, but because I only have an IP camera on that network, and the camera has built-in DDNS support for noip. But I hate it having to renew monthly.
I also use duckdns, but in the last year it went down like twice or something. Its good but not really reliable.
I use cloudflare and have a dyndns client running on my synology nas
I pay an extra £1 a month to my ISP to get a static address. Figured it’s well worth having no hassle.
your domain provider probably has an api to update dns records i use cloudflare with their api because then i can hide my ip behind their proxy or if i don’t have a public ip i can use their tunnels
I’m still using noip.com. There may be better/cheaper options these days, but this has worked well for me for years, and I don’t see the need to change.
Aside from a brief scare a couple of months ago, when the owner/operator was unreachable and the configuration interface and some automatic update paths were not working, I have been using afraid.org, and it has proven to be a stellar service, and free for basic needs.
Afraid.org is what I’ve been using ever since dyndns started charging big prices for what used to be free.
Before, I used to use duckdns. Completely free and super simple
Nowadays I just have a docker container that updates my A records on my domain directly through namesilo’s API. Took like 5 mins to set up the config