Fixed name to dynamic IP with CNAME

Notice: this is not an advanced nor secret trickery. This is just something I’ve found even techsavvy people in my surrounding not having done so its worth being highlighted.

When I upgraded to fiber from ADSL, I had to give up my fixed IPv4 address that I’ve been using for around 10 years and switch to a dynamic DNS service .

In this situation I see lots of people everywhere use dyndns.org and similar services that offer dynamicly assigning a new IP to a fixed host name so that you and your computer illiterate friends still can reach your home site.

I suggest a minor variation of this, that still avoids having to run your own dyndns server on your server. It only requires that you admin and control a DNS domain already, but who doesn’t these days?

  1. Get that dyndns host name at the free provider that makes the name hold your current IP. Let’s call it home.dyndns.org.
  2. In your own DNS zone for your domain (example.com) you add an entry for your host ‘home.example.com‘ as a CNAME, pointing over to home.dyndns.org
  3. Now you can ping or ssh or whatever to ‘home.example.com‘ and it will remain your home IP even when it moves.
  4. Smile and keep using that host name in your own domain to your dynamic IP