Unfortunately, my (otherwise great) registrar Porkbun doesn’t have an API or any other way to automatically update DNS records. I’ve updated my IP manually until now as I have a semi-dynamic one that only changes a couple of times a year. But I won’t have that luxury anymore when I move, so I looked for ways to automatically update the IP. Cloudflare’s authoritative DNS server can be used for free and supports automatic IP changes, but they probably sell data and a third of the interwebs uses cloudflare and I don’t want my server to be unreachable along with a third of the interwebs when Cloudflare has an outage again, as it recently happened. I want to be as decentralised and independent as possible. But I also don’t want to pay for an authoritative DNS server in addition to an expensive .io domain just to be reachable from the outside. I spent many hours trying to find an alternative.
I had already given up and successfully set up Cloudflare when I made one last search because I just didn’t want to give up. And I was rewarded. I don’t remember how, but I found deSEC, a non-profit organisation that offers free of charge and open source authoritative DNS services with servers around the world and an API. They also offer free ___.dedyn.io subdomains, if you’re looking for a completely free way to be reachable from the outside via a readable domain on a dynamic (or any) IP. Apparently, their subdomains can have a TTL as low as 60 seconds but own domains have a minimum of 1 hour by default and API access to update the IP may be blocked, as it was the case for phal.io. As the error message and web reference stated, I contacted them via email and they were very nice and enabled my domain for dynamic updates which also includes setting the minimum TTL to 60 seconds.
It’s perfect, just what I was looking for. Almost too good to be true. And should they ever have an outage, I also have Cloudflare ready to go and can temporarily switch to their DNS servers. As of now, I really recommend deSEC for non-profit, free (of charge) and open source authoritative (dynamic) DNS services and/or a free subdomain. I’ll put them on my list™ of people to donate to as soon as I’m a YT multiplujillionaire. You should also donate if you have too much money and don’t know what to do with it.