Configuring your dynDNS Client

Here’s how to configure your client to send your IP address to our servers so that we can publish it in the DNS. This works with both your own domains and with dynDNS domains registered with us under dedyn.io. Depending on your use case, one of the following options might be easier than the others.

To update your dynDNS IP address, there are several options:

Option 1: Use Your Router

For most folks, using the integrated dynDNS client of their router will be easiest. Here are two ways how to configure it.

Use your router’s deSEC provider

Some routers have support for deSEC out of the box, and you just need to select the right option (“deSEC”, “desec.io”, “dedyn”, or similar). For example, if you run a router with the OpenWRT operation system, watch out for the “desec.io” provider.

Custom Configuration

If your router does not have deSEC preconfigured, the configuration procedure will depend on the specific type of router which is why we can’t provide a tutorial for all of them. However, most of the time it boils down to enter the following details in your router configuration:

Update Server update.dedyn.io, or Update URL https://update.dedyn.io/
Username (the full name of the domain you want to update, e.g. yourname.dedyn.io)
Hostname (same as your username)
Token secret (long random string for authentication, displayed after sign-up)

Advanced API users: The dynDNS token technically is a regular API token with permissions restricted to DNS management (not allowing account management).

Note: Please read the security warning at Determine IP Address(es).

IPv6 Support

There is a chance that your router already properly supports pushing its IPv6 address to us. If it does not, you can try to let our servers determine your IPv6 address by using IPv6 to connect. To see if this method works for you, modify the “Update Server” or “Update URL” setting in your router’s configuration to update6.dedyn.io and https://update6.dedyn.io/, respectively.

Note that when using this update server, your IPv4 address will be deleted from the DNS, and your domain will operate in IPv6-only mode. (For an explanation why that is the case, see Determine IP Address(es).) It is not possible to set up IPv4 and IPv6 by using both update servers in an alternating fashion.

To update both your IPv4 and IPv6 address at the same time, most routers need to be configured with an update URL that provides both IP addresses via query string parameters, e.g. https://update.dedyn.io/?myipv4=1.2.3.4&myipv6=fd08::1234, with the IP addresses replaced by placeholders. To find out the placeholder names for your router, please refer to the manual of your device.

Example: Fritz!Box Devices

For Fritz!Box devices, for example, the corresponding URL reads: https://update.dedyn.io/?myipv4=<ipaddr>&myipv6=<ip6addr>

Field	Entry
DynDNS Provider	User-defined
Update URL ¹	`https://update.dedyn.io/?myipv4=<ipaddr>&myipv6=<ip6addr>`
Domain Name	<your domain>
Username ²	<your domain>
Password ³	<your authentication token secret>

Note 1: Note that the placeholders <ipaddr> and <ip6addr> in the update URL must remain unchanged; your router will substitute them automatically. Furthermore, it is neither necessary nor recommended to use the placeholders <username> and <passwd> in the URL, as the Fritz!Box also supports HTTP basic authentication which is more secure (see IP Update Authentication).
Note 2: Not your deSEC username! Instead, use the domain you want to update, for example yourdomain.dedyn.io. See IP Update Authentication for details.
Note 3: A valid token secret for the domain. Not your deSEC account password!

Option 2: Use ddclient

Automatic configuration (Debian-/Ubuntu-based systems)

If you’re on Debian, Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution that provides you with the ddclient package, you can use it to update your IP address with our servers. Note that depending on the ddclient version you are using, IPv6 support may be limited.

To install ddclient, run sudo apt-get install ddclient. If a configuration dialog does not appear automatically, use sudo dpkg-reconfigure ddclient to start the configuration process.

In the configuration process, select “other” dynamic DNS service provider, and enter update.dedyn.io as the dynamic DNS server. Next, tell ddclient to use the “dyndns2” protocol to perform updates. Afterwards, enter the username and the token secret that you received during registration. Last, tell ddclient how to detect your IP address, your domain name and the update interval. To test your setup, run sudo ddclient -force and see if everything works as expected.

Note: As of the time of this writing, ddclient does not use an encrypted HTTPS connection by default when the scheme https:// is missing from the URL and the ssl setting is not supplied. To enable, open ddclient.conf and add ssl=yes above the server setting, or explicitly use https:// in your URL. We strongly recommend doing so; otherwise, your credentials will be exposed during transmission.

Manual configuration (other systems)

After installing ddclient, you can start with a ddclient.conf configuration file similar to this one, with the three placeholders replaced by your domain name and your token secret:

protocol=dyndns2
# Run in daemon mode: auto-update DNS every 10min. (Alternatively, use cron.)
#daemon=600
# "use=cmd" and the curl command is one way of doing this; other ways exist
use=cmd, cmd='curl https://checkipv4.dedyn.io/'
ssl=yes
server=update.dedyn.io
login=[domain]
password='[token secret]'
[domain]

For more information, check out these two sections of the ddclient documentation.

Note 1

Exclusively on Debian and derivatives, since ddclient 3.8.2-3 you can enable IPv6 by replacing use with usev6, checkipv4.dedyn.io with checkipv6.dedyn.io, and update.dedyn.io with update6.dedyn.io. There are some notes here.

Note 2

According to Determine IP Address(es), the IP used for connecting to the update server is also considered when trying to find an IPv6 address to assign to your domain. So, if you connect via IPv6, this address will be set on your domain, even if you did not provide it explicitly.

If you would like to avoid setting an IPv6 address automatically, and instead configure an address statically (or remove the address), you can add a the myipv6 parameter on the domain section, like this: mydomain.dedyn.io&myipv6= (delete) or mydomain.dedyn.io&myipv6=::1 (static value)

To test your setup, run sudo ddclient -force and see if everything works as expected.

Note: Please read the security warning at Determine IP Address(es).

Updating Multiple Domains

To have multiple domain names point to the same dynamic IP address, it is best to designate one of them as the main domain for updates and create CNAME records for the others. This way, the other domains will automatically resolve to the same IP address as the main domain.

Alternatively, for cases where a CNAME is not suitable (e.g. when the IPv4 address is the same, but the IPv6 address differs), it is possible to update multiple hostnames (such as example.com and sub.example.com) in a single API call, as long as they all belong to the same domain. It is not possible to update hostnames belonging to different domains (e.g. example.com and example.org) in the same request.

It’s also possible to specify multiple (sub)domains for a single update request, by separating them with a comma. (This requires your dynDNS client to accept this syntax.) For example, when using ddclient, you can edit ddclient.conf and set domain.org,sub.domain.org&myipv6=preserve as the domain to update. In this case the IPv4 address of both domain.org and sub.domain.org will be updated while preserving any (different) IPv6 addresses.

If you try to update several subdomains by issuing multiple update requests, your update requests may be refused (see Rate Limits).