Does anyone have any experience setting up a personal dynamic DNS server using Amazon AWS free tier?

[G+_Daniel Stagner]

Does anyone have any experience setting up a personal dynamic DNS server using Amazon AWS free tier? The goal would be to use it as a DDNS pointer to my OpenVPN connection home for the next 12 months. I set up a rpi2 as an OpenVPN point but I do not know when my IP address will change. And using AWS free tier just sounds more secure than the free alternatives. But I may be wrong on that.

[G+_Gene Hill]

I don't have any experience with setting up DDNS on AWS, but I wanted to mention my setup.

On my domain's DNS server I created CNAME record to point to an "afraid.org" DDNS service. They have free versions and premium versions of the DDNS service. OR you could also setup OpenVPN using the Afraid.org DDNS name that you pick from their over 69,000 domain pool.

 

My RPI OpenVPN has a cronjob (that they create for you) to update the DDNS service every few minutes to make sure it's always up to date. It's way easier than setting up anything in AWS.

 

As far as security... It's only security through obscurity, the ports are still open to the internet. You're no less or more secure than you would be using an AWS DNS server.

 

[G+_Travis Hershberger]

First off, it may at first seem like it could be more secure, but do you think you, yourself, can make something as secure as a company with an entire team of people that do nothing but security?

 

Secondly, using the Amazon AWS doesn't really have anything to do with it. Yes, go ahead and use their free tier, but that's neither her not there in actually getting something setup.

 

Finally, I can't be any help in actually getting something setup, reference my first comment as to why.

[G+_Jason Marsh]

+1 for freedns.afraid.org - FreeDNS - Free DNS - Dynamic DNS - Static DNS subdomain and domain hosting

 

I used their free tier for a short while when Dyn stopped their free offering. I am a paying customer now that I have a few domains of my own. If you own a domain, you can use their free offering and add your.domain to the pool so others may use it and you get DDNS for free, or go premium so your.domain is only for your use.

 

For some reason I need a reminder or two each year to pay, but they're always gracious, letting me get away with being late. I appreciate that they still operate a free tier, so I'm happy to support them.

[G+_Ben Reese]

I have a personalized domain registered with Name Cheap. They offer dynamic DNS support at no additional cost.

 

Also, although your home IP could change, it probably won't. Before I moved I had the same IP for a couple years and I think I've had the same one since I moved here.

 

I also give a +1 for Afraid.org if you want free.

[G+_David Peach]

Just a comment to agree with Ben Reese about your home IP not changing. I know this is probably not true with every ISP but my IP address did not change for 6 years. Only after a multi-hour electricity and internet outage in our area did mine change. Even though I was away from home my family was still there. I got one of the family members to get the external IP address for me and I manually updated my address at my domain registration.

 

If I only have to deal with it twice a decade them I'm fine with doing it manually.

 

Your IP may not be that stable, but for most of us they probably don't change all the time like they used to.

[G+_Ben Tyger]

If you want to use Amazon's DNS service, take a look at route53. I use it because I'm slowly moving off of dreamhost to AWS services. This takes care of me having to run support multiple DNS servers for about 0.51cents / month / domain. They have good APIs for dynamic DNS. Some devices support Route53 out of the box. I know my pfSense 2.3 did.