this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
47 points (96.1% liked)

Selfhosted

53057 readers
614 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi everyone,

a couple of friends and I have a Jellyfin server running which is exposed to the internet via a reverse-proxy and https by using a free dynDNS provider.

The setup is working fine besides the dynDNS provider. We constantly face connection issues, making the dynamic DNS functionality very unreliable.

So I started looking into possible solutions and one particular would be to buy an own domain which would only cost a few bucks each month. With this I could keep the current setup and would just need to change the domain (and possibly the SSL certificate). I found a provider over which I could buy (rent?) a domain and which also provides dynDNS functionality. But I am not too sure if I understood this correctly:

  • if I have an own domain, why would I need the additional dynDNS functionality? I would guess that I would just continue updating your server's IP address to the domain name like we are doing now
  • can the provider over which I rent the domain with servers in my country actually see what our traffic is? Especially since we are streaming our movies etc.
  • is there a better way of obtaining and setting up your own domain also in terms of privacy and reliability than with a bigger company offering such services?

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Edit: An important fact I forgot to add in my main post is that during these issues, the general server connection should be fine since it is located at a friends house and his internet connection is unaffected (e.g. we could still talk in Discord normally and he had no internet issues whatsoever)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As someone else mentioned, this does not seem to be an issue with the DynDNS itself. But rather the fact that your ISP changes your IP regularly (DHCP, non-static IP). I would really recommend you get a static IP from your ISP. DNS lookups should never fail after that.

[–] dingleberrylover@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have a script running which sends the current IP to our dynDNS provider. I would assume that this is fine then?

[–] Strit@lemmy.linuxuserspace.show 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Sure, but until their DNS records update, the server is unreachable at the domain address.

[–] dingleberrylover@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So there could be a potenital issue where the correct IP address has been sent but the record has not been updated ... Yesterday for example we faced the issue that at least one of three could not access the server. Suddenly it worked for someone who could not connect, only for him to lose access again after a couple of minutes. We all have been in Discord during that time, and the internet connection was fine for everyone.

[–] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

If there's several of you, really, get a dedicated IP address (a domain name is nice but not necessary). Usually a dedicated IP is not an option for normal priced home connections, but a full (not shared) VPS with decent storage/performance can be had for under €10/month, and that will always have a static IP.

[–] kossa@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

Don't even need storage or performance or anything on the VPS, just forward stuff to the homeserver.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 3 points 3 days ago

Whenever I create a redirection on my domain it's always instantaneous, but it still warns me that "DNS records may take up to 24h to propagate"