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Show HN: zzzz.io, a free DynDNS replacement I created on the weekend
- NicoJuicy 12y agoPerhaps an alternative is pagekite ( https://pagekite.net/ https://pagekite.net/ ) an opensource (Python) tunneling service. It's also more avanced then this one. And yes, it can modify your localhost:9999 to mydomain:80. Why is that usefull? My ISP blocks ports upto 8999, so i wouldn't run a webserver / ftp / smtp / ... without paying extra for unlocking those ports :)
- kopf 12y agoI'm afraid pagekite addresses a different problem to zzzz.
- oebs 12y agoWhy 8.8.8.8, which is a name server operated by Google, as an authoritative NS record for zzzz.io, in addition to the Route53 entries?
- jakio 12y agoIt seems we've had a similar weekend! https://alias.re https://alias.re
- kopf 12y agoI don't think it's anything incredibly special (especially with the ugly bootstrap theme), and you guys probably all have your own domain names anyhow, but I'm just posting it on the off-chance that it might be useful to someone here. Plus, I quite like 'zzzz' in comparison to the domain names offered by other free dyndns alternatives out there.
- DoubleMalt 12y agoWhat's the technology stack? Would there be a way to persuade you to opensource it?
- tekknolagi 12y ago^^ Seconded.
- Udo 12y agoIt's very neat, I like the simplicity of the API. If you promise to keep it up for a while, I'll definitely use it!
- kopf 12y agoI use it myself, so it'll be up for the foreseeable future. Enjoy.
- VonGuard 12y agoI am fairly shocked it took this long for someone to make a DynDNS replacement. I haven't been able to effectively use DynDNS since last century.
- nemasu 12y agoIs there an API to re-assign an IP address to your account?
- kopf 12y agoYes, there's a very minimal API - you can find more information at https://zzzz.io/faq/ https://zzzz.io/faq/ . It basically just supports updating the IP address associated with your subdomain. As noted on that page, you can simply GET the URL, and your subdomain will point to the IP you performed the request from, or you can specify an IP address explicitly.
- karlshea 12y agoLooks cool. IPv6 support would be neat. Does this work with the AirPort dynamic global hostname? I put my username and password in, but since my IP didn't change since I signed up I couldn't see if it was working right.
- justincormack 12y agoWhy do you want ipv6 support? There are already ipv6 mechanisms like mobility aren't there (although not set them up yet).
- X-Istence 12y agoBecause it would be nice to have a DNS entry that resolves to my dynamic IPv6 address that I am given by my ISP...
- zaphoyd 12y agoIPv6 mobile address portability attempts to keep your IPv6 address constant as you move around different wireless access points or LANs within a company or ISP network. It doesn't provide a globally static address or way to provide a static hostname. Even with a static or mostly static IPv6 address the ability to have a dual stack dynamic hostname where both the v4 (that changes a lot) and the v6 (which might change less) is still useful. It is also obviously useful as you roam between office and home and such and want to keep a hostname constant.
- fulafel 12y agoMobile IP in IPv6 is very much meant to keep your stable, global address working while you roam around the global Internet. The route optimization mechanism means your packets can travel directly between the mobile node's care-of address and the other guy if they both support MIP, so no need to be even on the same continent. Sadly MIP is mostly dead, though there seems to be a somewhat up to date (2013) Linux impl of Mobile IP v6 and NEMO for IPv4 here: http://umip.org/ http://umip.org/ My impression is that it was kind of overshadowed by IETF's efforts to make an architecturally pretty fix to the whole locator-vs-ID thing. This is the work leading to the LISP protocol. You can now find papers from Facebook, Cisco, etc advocating its deployment. Hopefully it will get popular at some point.
- larrybolt 12y agoPersonally I use CloudFlare's API to achieve the same, using a small sh-script that I run in cron: https://gist.github.com/larrybolt/6295160 https://gist.github.com/larrybolt/6295160
- shaunpud 12y agoI also did a similar one in Python for duckdns.org: https://gist.github.com/shaunpud/0d72f2d23a4ddd0fbab6 https://gist.github.com/shaunpud/0d72f2d23a4ddd0fbab6
- tkfu 12y agoIs there any particular reason you didn't just add your domain to the pool at https://freedns.afraid.org/ https://freedns.afraid.org/ ?
- thiagoc 12y agoI'm using it successfully with a custom domain. It works great.
- Fuxy 12y agoToo easy us programmers like to complicate things in order to make them easy. :P
- andmarios 12y agoAlthough this may not be perceived as constructive criticism but freedns is indeed great. It has many features, thousands domains, support for your own domain, perfect availability and it is free. The person behind it seems more interested to provide a free quality service than promote himself. For anyone building a dynamic IP service, freedns sets the level they should strive for.
- hackety 12y agoIs the source for this available somewhere?
- gaz 12y ago+1 i'd like to see the source :)
- rgbrgb 12y agoA bit confused. Is this for tunneling localhost like ngrok (https://ngrok.com/ https://ngrok.com/)?
- larrybolt 12y agoNo, localtunnel or ngrok will tunnel a local port (such as for instance 127.0.0.1:80) to a public domain name (alias.ngrok.com). This only redirects an alias to your ip address (alias.zzzz.io -> wan-ip-address). The big difference is when you are inside your local network behind the router, or at work behind a firewall simple accessing the wan-ip won't reach your machine, unless you do port-forwarding (which isn't always straightforward or even possible.) Ngrok solves this problem by being in the middle, both your machine and a person visiting alias.ngrok.com are connecting to ngrok, ngrok just passes the data along. What this service however is good for is to have a dns address that always points to your local machine or your home network if your ISP doesn't provide you with a static ip (thus your ip changes every so often).
- rgbrgb 12y agoAh, OK. Thanks for the explanation. I wish there was some compromise where I could tunnel a local port in such a way that didn't require a server.
- larrybolt 12y agoAnd I didn't even mention how some ISP's block ports below 1024 (thus ssh, ftp and web standard ports cannot be used to accept incoming connections even if you are connected to the WAN or did the port forwarding correctly). That pretty much is (or was, not sure how most games currently handle networking) the main frustration of setting up a game server at home for your friends at their homes. One solution back then was to use Hamachi to create a "virtual lan network". Btw for some use-cases you could even use "ssh -L <local port>:<remote computer>:<remote port> <user>@<remote ip>" with a server, and certainly nowadays you can get a vps at 12$/year (nothing fancy, but good enough for tunnelling ports). Hamachi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamachi_(software)
- nmc 12y ago> DynDNS replacement I would disagree. This may look like a replacement from the end-user's point of view, but it does not address the real issues of DNS management: space to store all zone data, bandwidth to support requests flow, resources to handle the load. Either you are just proxying someone else's service, or you are running your own on (supposedly) limited resources. Am I wrong? Moreover, I heard from DynDNS engineers that the main reason that led them to stop their free hostname offer was: it was abused for spamming too often. How do you intend to cope with that?
- kopf 12y ago> it does not address the real issues of DNS management: space to store all zone data, bandwidth to support requests flow, resources to handle the load. You're absolutely right! However, as you said, it solves the user's problem from their point of view. The main reason I started this project was that other dyndns alternatives (whether they be proxies or "fully-fledged" operations) have rather ugly domain names, in my opinion. 'zzzz' popped into my head, I saw that 'zzzz.io' was free, and decided to get it. A few weeks later, I finally got around to throwing a webapp together so others could benefit. Not such a horrible thing to do, or? And yes, the service is backed up by Amazon's Route 53. I did learn a thing or two about BIND and DNS from the experience though, which is also a plus.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- kbar13 12y agosecurity vulns are not in and of itself (themselves?) indicative of the usability/quality of the software. If someone were to finger all the nameservers in the world, I would bet that BIND has a large user share. A good alternative is NSD from the team that also makes unbound.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- s_ 12y agoLooks good. I have dd-wrt flashed on my home router. Since you are not in default service provider, I will try your service with wget+cron. Will host my own if your works :) http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DDNS_-_How_to_setup_Custom_DDNS_settings_using_embedded_inadyn_-_HOWTO#Give_UP.3F http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DDNS_-_How_to_setup_Cus...
- kopf 12y agoThat should work fine! Email me if you run into trouble.
- mokkol 12y agoVery neat! How much does it cost you to keep this service up? In case I need it and want to donate.
- kopf 12y agoNot a whole lot. The domain itself costs ~50 euro per year. I'm hoping the AWS costs won't run too high - I figure a few euro per month. It's not really about the money but about the rush of endorphins you get when an email arrives in your inbox to the effect that a total stranger found something you made so useful that they decided to give you a few euro out of the good of their own heart.
- tejasm 12y agoI can send across a few amazon credit codes which will help you with aws. How do I get in touch?
- larrybolt 12y agoBtw, if you are trying to give your home-network with a dynamic ip address a hostname to access it from the internet, it may be worth looking up if your ISP provider doesn't provide that already for you out of the box: dig -x `curl -s http://icanhazip.com` http://icanhazip.com` Here in Belgium Telenet does that, which means for my home network I could just setup a CNAME record to that hostname.
- philbarr 12y agoLooks good! Minor gripe: "Why did you make zzzz? DynDNS was a very popular dynamic DNS provider which in the 90s [did something?]."
- kopf 12y agoWhoops! Fixed. Thanks!
- dshankar 12y agoCool hack! How did you implement this? Care to share the details? You mention Route 53, but I'm curious to learn more. What does the stack look like? How do your update zonefiles, assign subdomains etc.? It would be fun to hack on this + a cryptocurrency component - let's say, zzzzcoin - people can pay an incredibly small sum of zzzzcoin per request. This could be used to deter spam, remain free/affordable, reward early adopters, and turn into meaningful revenue.
- clyfe 12y agoWe also built https://entrydns.net/ https://entrydns.net/ It's a more complete solution. Running for about 3 years now.
- shock 12y agoLooks good, thanks for making it free!
- stevekemp 12y agoLooks good. I've been pondering git-dns.io for a while - storing DNS in git and using hooks to trigger rebuilds. Unfortunately most of the DNS resellers are expensive, and using Amazon means your hosted domains get given "random nameservers", which complicates the setup for somebody importing lots of domains. I'd love to be able to say "Use a/b/c.git-dns.io" for the nameservers, but all the resellers of DNS make you pay a lot of cash up-front for vanity nameservers, which I think would make the thing unprofitable. (Running bind/tinydns on three toy virtual machines around the world would work - but DNS-servers are traditionally a DoS magnet, so I know I'd get taken down sooner or later if I went down that path.)
- zrail 12y agoHave you seen LuaDNS? It sounds sort of what you're talking about, and they let you set up vanity servers if you want. http://www.luadns.com/ http://www.luadns.com/
- stevekemp 12y agoYes I looked at several companies looking to see who I could use as a back-end, LuaDNS jumped out because I've an interest in Lua, but it seemed more like they'd be a competitor than a back-end provider. That said I think I pretty much shelved the idea when I considered how hard it would be to get paying customers.
- nly 12y agoA lot of well established DNS providers already support dynamic DNS. Hurricane Electric even integrate dynamic update with their IPv6 tunnel service (so updating your IPv6 tunnel automatically updates your dyndns).
- cowchase 12y agoFor anyone looking into free DynDNS alternatives: I have tested several of the established alternatives without success. I then looked into some of the newcomers and ended up choosing http://duckdns.org http://duckdns.org. The setup was super easy and the service has been absolutely reliable so far.
- ChrisArchitect 12y agothis related to or based on http://www.hopper.pw http://www.hopper.pw ?
- kopf 12y agoNope
- digitalsushi 12y agoWill you ban a client if it posts updates on a regular cycle? I got banned from dyndns because I wrote my own client and put it into cron. (I think it's actually smart they banned me, since it was a huge waste of time to update with no new info)
- kopf 12y agoI'll be keeping an eye on logs and AWS expenditure to see if this becomes a problem. :) I'm not one to jump to the nuclear option of banning clients outright - if I notice behaviour that's harmful and needs to be corrected, I'll email the individuals concerned and talk them through how to use the service more efficiently, while also improving my own documentation on the website (which I admit isn't as thorough as I'd like).
- ja30278 12y agoI hacked up something similar on appengine a few years ago, though it's more of a url shortener than a DynDNS replacment. http://symlinkd.com http://symlinkd.com
- smaudet 12y agoSignup broken in Chrome (lol), works just fine in Firefox :)
- ken_laun 12y agoLooks neat, good! And I like the phrase "Get Yours Now" on the top page. Thanks for making it free.
- pbreit 12y ago"created on the weekend" is not very reassuring. Why would you tout that (if you wanted users vs showing off)?
- kopf 12y agoI don't want to sound off-hand, but - what are you worried about? The application is basically a thin layer in front of AWS's Route 53. All user data is stored safely and securely. Are you just as suspicious of popular applications that sprang up from hackdays?
- pbreit 12y agoI use to use DynDNS to access my POS terminal at my retail store. Dynamic dns is frequently an important tool so, yes, I would be very wary of using a hackaday production of it.
- vohof 12y agoSeems the same with http://xip.io http://xip.io