Goodbye Free DynDNS Service

[#1]

You may need to know that DYN the providers of Dynamic DNS Hosting, have as of May 7th, ceased their free DNS host service.
The upshot being if your router is using the DynDNS service to assign your dynamic PlusNet IP against a custom hostname, this will no longer work!

This free dynamic host service has been in constant use since 1990 when it was a community and opensource project. It is often the one and only dynamic DNS service on many routers and IoT devices. But now you have to pay $$$$s for the pro-service. Another fine example of the corporatization of net-neutrality.
http://www.dyncommunity.com/questions/37839/free-account-closure-bad-idea.html?page=1&pageSize=5&sor...
+++ I should add, as a corporate predator, DYN has also purchased other free to use DynDNS services including TZO.com - which are now no longer free +++

[#2]

a business changing it's model has nothing to do with net neutrality.

[#3]

Thanks for your feedback.
jim:quote

[#4]

I've switched to dtdns and haven't had any problems as of yet.

[#5]

Bob, many thanks for your constructive reply.
The problem with certain routers, especially the legacy ones from Netgear and DLink, is they are hard wired to DynDNS - or have a drop down with one option. I suspect OEMs took the DNS software from DYN as it was on freebie GPL. Sadly, other DynDNS services have either gone extinct or, been predated by DYN - not leaving us 'IP pool party' people many options.
There's a zoo of update clients and Linux scripts on DTDNS so I'll check them out -> http://www.dtdns.com/dtsite/updateclients

[#6]

I've a suspicion that accounts signed up via this mechanism may not be expiring. I have both and whilst my dyndns.org address no longer resolves, my dlinkddns.com one does.
There's some info about the D-Link addresses here in their FAQ.

[#7]

If your router saves the configuration as a text file, then you may be able to insert something along the lines of:
#
#  [ dyndns.ini ]  Add DDNSoMatic for DDNS operation (Thomson 585v7) in this config file section
#
dyndns host add group=dyndns_0 name=all.dnsomatic.com
dyndns modify name=dyndns_0 intf=Internet user=<user> password=<passwd> group=dyndns_0 service=custom status=enabled
dyndns service modify name=custom server=updates.dnsomatic.com port=www-http request=/nic/update retryinterval=30 max_retry=3
or you could use the equivalent telnet commands, if you can find them.
The above updates dnsomatic (part of opendns) which updates the IP address in your opendns account (for logging/statistics etc) and also can "forward" the update to a range of DDNS services.

[#8]

Thanks guys. Somewhere burried in the router is the Linux DDNS script and core. I've found a default config file containing these lines, but I'm not sure if they work just with the DynDNS service or, their portable to another DNS provider :

    ddns_enable=0
    ddns_service_provider=dyndns
    ddns_user_name=
    ddns_password=
    ddns_host_name=
    ddns_use_wildcards=0

"ddns_host_name=" would suggest it's re-wireable, so I will try PeeGee's settings in there. However, there may be something else hardwired into the DynDNS service?
I've also the CHRON table entry for the DNS update, but it's pointing to some unresolvable link? I am no Linux/Busybox/Bash expert!
^{Stay tuned to this frequency...}

[#9]

Unfortunately, your list of ddns parameters does not include a server ("members.dyndns.org" for dyndns and "updates.dnsomatic.com" for dnsomatic)   If you can find the string, you could try replacing it.
"host" is the name associated with the IP - all.dnsomatic.com for dnsomatic.
The 585 has a "custom" setting, but I find it easier to use telnet or edit the config file (as both can be done by cut/paste ).
Phil

[#10]

My 7800n seems to have a drop-down list of about 16 ddns services available.

[#11]

Seeking a workaround to point a Netgear router at another Dynamic DNS host, I've been peering under the hood with Telnet, looking for that all important configuration file - so I can change it.
A configuration file is what one should expect to find but, so far it seems Netgear intends this router to point to DynDNS.org only. The source code for the open source DDNS service 'ez-ipconfig' implements many web hosts, but Netgear's factory compiler decided to ignore them and only provides for three [and null] services. As a result, all IP Roads lead to members.dyndns.org. Open Source doesn't necessarily mean open implementation?
Code geeks, see attached :

[#12]

Unfortunately Netgear do like hard coding things like that !
Recently I had to do a similar investigation when one of my secondary wireless routers (Netgear WNR834B), no longer knew what the time or date was.
It turned out that Netgear had hardcoded the NTP lookups to be fetched only from Netgears own NTP servers.  Unfortunately Netgear had taken their servers offline for maintenance which took about three weeks.  Unfortunately there was no way of specifying an alternative NTP source.
This caused no end of grief, as the router provides my children with their internet connection, and applies different content filtering rules depending on time of day, and whether it is the weekend or not.  So when the time became random, or unpredictable, I had to remove the time dependent rules and permanently set them to a fairly strict level.  Having given up all hope of Netgear fixing their servers, they reappeared and I was able to reinstate variable filtering.

[#13]

for asus routers and other opensource someone has made a dlink emulator so dyndns thinks the router is dlink and hence free.

[#14]

Cheeky one there Chrcoluk - I bet DYN$ will be severing their relationship with DLink soon.
Purleigh, whilst looking through the source code I too noticed some other hard coded IP addresses! I expect they are expecting those IPv4 values them to remain static forever? I do wonder exactly how much open source code is ripped by corporations, without due diligence to quality control - or even basic programming skills 101. btw I came across this honest developer comment  -

    // okay, dhs's service is incredibly stupid and will not work with two
    // requests right after each other. I could care less that this is ugly,
    // I personally will NEVER use dhs, it is laughable.
  sleep(DHS_SUCKY_TIMEOUT < timeout.tv_sec ? DHS_SUCKY_TIMEOUT : timeout.tv_sec);

[#15]

I wonder if the Netgear's.etc use their internal DNS relay to do the lookups, might be able to get away with a bit of DNS poisoning