Last Updated on July 9, 2023 by Thiago Crepaldi
No-IP is a simple and free Dynamic DNS (aka DDNS) service that is supported as a custom configuration on your Unifi Dream Router (aka UDR), but still very stable and easy to get it running with the right steps. Although I have mentioned this tutorial is meant for the Unifi dream Router, it should also work for Unifi Dream Machine Pro/SE Edition too, with small UI differences.
No-IP account
Go to noip.com and sign-up by using an email, password and username. Once you are logged in, click on Dynamic DNS >> No-IP Hostnames. Next, click on Create hostname and fill in the form as follows:
- Create a Hostname
- Hostname: myhostname
- Domain: Select one of the free domains, say ddns.net
- Record type: DNS Host (A)
- IPv4 Address: 255.255.255.255 (or any other IP that is not your public IP)
- Your public IP will overwrite this value later
Unifi Setup
Now that you have created your hostname at noip.com, on your UDR, go to Applications >> Network >> Settings >> Internet page. Click on your WAN interface, scroll down until you find Dynamic DNS section and finally click at Create New Dynamic DNS button and fill in the form as follows:
- Service: noip
- Hostname: myhostname.ddns.net
- Username: Your No-IP username
- Password: Your No-IP password
- Server: leave empty
Click on Save. If you entered all correct information, right after saving, your public IP must be sent to No-IP servers. Go to your https://my.noip.com/dynamic-dns account and check it out. That is it!
You thing that you may have noticed is that Unifi does not allow you to set an interval update time… But rest assured, UDR does everything under the hood for you!
OPTIONAL: Redirect No-IP URL to your Domain’s
Although it is good enough to have myhostname.noip.com returning your router’s public IP, it is even cooler to have ddns.mydomain.com pointing to your router!
In order to do so, all you have to do is to create a CNAME record on your DNS provider. Type ddns or whatever name you prefer as subdomain and as use your full No-IP URL as the Target/Content (e.g. mysubdomain.ddns.net). TTL can be as short as 15 min. If you are using Cloudflare, change Proxy type to DNS only. After creating this entry, it should take a couple minutes until ddns.mydomain.com starts redirecting to myhostname.ddns.net which will point to your UDR’s public IP in turn. Pretty cool, huh?