I'm moving and have to give up having a fixed IP - how do I share outside my LAN?

[Mendocinotim 23]

I'm moving and have to give up having a fixed IP - how do I share outside my LAN?

We are considering moving to a remote location, where Starlink is our best option.
We have lived (rented) the same house for 23 years, but now have to move.

As I am a lifetime Emby Premier member of this community, I am wondering..?
Is there a way for my users to access my server without my needing a fixed IP address?
I have a domain name assigned to my fixed IP (in my current home) right now.

What do you suggest?

[keithsrobertson 11]

Dynamic DNS is what you want.

My ISP routinely renews my IP, typically at least once a day. So I currently use No-Ip (www.noip), but have used other services such as changeip in the past (www.changeip.com), but there are many others, some free, some paid.

You enter your preferred name and choose your a ddns domain name from a list provided by the dynamic dns provider. As an example say its *.ddns.info, and you choose it to be mendocinotim.ddns.info

You have to then update that ddns record so it points to your current ip address where your emby server is, this is usually done via your router, but can be done with other hardware or software as well.

Best to check which ddns your router supports to see what options are available to you.

I have some posts that previously I made in relation to ddns for my emby server running on a qnap nas device, including generating ssl certs for the emby server so that users can connect securely to (using the same example as above): https://mendocinotim.ddns.info:8920, which is then connected to your ip address of the emby server running at your home.

Edit: You may be able to use your existing domain name you already have, to be dynamically updated with the server ip, same as the ddns - but I dont have a domain name, so I have no experience of that myself, maybe someone else will be able to confirm if that is the case.

Hope that helps.

 

 

Edited March 29 by keithsrobertson

[Mendocinotim 23]

13 hours ago, keithsrobertson said:

Dynamic DNS is what you want.

My ISP routinely renews my IP, typically at least once a day. So I currently use No-Ip (www.noip), but have used other services such as changeip in the past (www.changeip.com), but there are many others, some free, some paid.

You enter your preferred name and choose your a ddns domain name from a list provided by the dynamic dns provider. As an example say its *.ddns.info, and you choose it to be mendocinotim.ddns.info

You have to then update that ddns record so it points to your current ip address where your emby server is, this is usually done via your router, but can be done with other hardware or software as well.

Best to check which ddns your router supports to see what options are available to you.

I have some posts that previously I made in relation to ddns for my emby server running on a qnap nas device, including generating ssl certs for the emby server so that users can connect securely to (using the same example as above): https://mendocinotim.ddns.info:8920, which is then connected to your ip address of the emby server running at your home.

Edit: You may be able to use your existing domain name you already have, to be dynamically updated with the server ip, same as the ddns - but I dont have a domain name, so I have no experience of that myself, maybe someone else will be able to confirm if that is the case.

Hope that helps.

 

 

That is worth looking into.
Thanks for the tip.

[sfatula 208]

I don't think that will work for Starlink. As far as I know, barring a business plan, Starlink uses cgnat, which cannot be used with port forwarding of any type. 

You'll need to look into options for bypassing cgnat. For me, I am using tailscale which has a way around cgnat but that requires every client to also be running it. Not sure if that is an option for you or not. 

[Mendocinotim 23]

I asked Perplexity.ai to help me find an answer to this question. I didn't want to have to pay any money if I could avoid doing so, and it turns out that Cloudflare is the best method. It doesn't cost anything and doesn't have any limits, so I thought I'm going to give that a try. Perplexity found and gave me step-by-step instructions to set this up. I've tested it, it works, and I don't have to worry about it again. The following is the tail end of that conversation with Perplexity. 

 

Why free DDNS services like No-IP and Dynu fail users after months of use and which hold up best

Here's the report — it covers all the major failure modes and ranks the options head-to-head.

The short version of why they fail:

- **No-IP Free** is the biggest offender — it silently kills your hostname if you miss a 30-day confirmation email, and then holds it for a ransom payment to get it back[1][2][3]
- **DuckDNS** gets blocked wholesale on corporate and school networks because the `.duckdns.org` suffix is flagged as a generic free-hosting domain — and it has documented outages where connections become erratic for hours[4][5]
- **Dynu** is much better but has occasional authentication errors where updates silently stop, leaving your hostname pointing at a stale IP[6][7]

The **Cloudflare free DNS + ddclient** combo holds up best long-term for your use case with `your site`: no expiration, no suffix blocking, full custom domain support, and enterprise-grade infrastructure — all completely free. You just transfer your domain's DNS to Cloudflare's nameservers, create an API token, and run `ddclient` as a daemon on your always-on Mac Mini. One A record updates dynamically; your other services hang off it as CNAME records.[8][9][10][11][12]