You register a domain name, set it up on CloudFlare and use a script which checks if your IP changed and submits it to the CloudFlare REST API setting an A record: https://github.com/kissgyorgy/cloudflare-dyndns

I've used ddclient which has support for a lot more DNS services, including Cloudflare: https://github.com/ddclient/ddclient

I wrote the script because I did not wanted to use ddclient :D and it's terrible config syntax. Also, it corrupted the cache regularly for some reason.

I wanted to add my "anecdata": I've run ddclient with namecheap for years and never had a single issue.

I ran into an issue doing this a few years ago where my ISP was blocking ports 80 and 443. I could port forward from my router on non-standard ports like host1.domain.tld:10080 (wan) -> 80 (lan), but LetsEncrypt didn't really like this and it was a pain to manually enter port numbers.

My solution was to use a VPS that was doing other stuff to also act as a nginx proxy to the internal machine on a non-blocked port. So it's now host2.domain.tld:443/80 (vps/nginx) -> host1.domain.tld:10080 (wan/host1.domain.tld) -> 80 (lan).

It really depends on how things are set up at your ISP.

In college, we had dynamically assigned, but publicly accessible addresses, so I used a dynamic DNS service to tie the domain name to my computer. I used freedns.afraid.org (mentioned by someone else), though other options exist and many routers integrate with a couple services out of the box (often dyndns.org). You can check if this will work by finding out your public IP (type "what's my IP" in a web search) and checking if that corresponds to the IP on your router (should be the WAN IP). If it is, you're probably set, but you'll need to check to see if your ISP blocks any ports. To check, just set up something on your computer and mess with the port forwarding settings on your router to point to it, and then test accessing it from outside your network (easiest is to start a webserver and try to access it from your phone while running in data).

If you can access services on your computer but your ISP blocks ports you want to use, call them and ask if those blocks can get removed. If not, you can get it to work by doing a reverse proxy using a VPS (good providers are Digital Ocean, Vultr, and Linode) to point to the ports your ISP does allow.

If you can't access your computer at all, you have two options:

1. Ask your ISP if they offer static IPs (mine does for ~$5/month) 2. Set up a tunnel from your computer to your VPS (SSH tunnels, VPN, etc)

Most ISPs either offer static IPs or give you a dynamic (changing), but publicly facing IP, so you probably won't need a VPS at all and just need to figure out the dynamic DNS thing.

As for assymetric upload/download, it's really not an issue, sending lots of data one way will just be slower than the other way. There just isn't much you can do about it.

There are some free offerings available of dynamic DNS. IIRC DuiaDNS [1] is free.

In The Netherlands (a very tiny country though) Xs4all is one of the very few ISPs allowing home users to change the A/AAAA/PTR/MX records of their hostname/IP address (for both their DSL and FTTH offerings). You can get a subdomain or use your own domain, with reverse DNS. They've been doing that since forever. You can also get shell access. They're also a bit more expensive than the competition though.

Running your own server has one disadvantage (though it has gotten smaller these days): electricity costs and impact. I'm getting solar and Raspberry Pis and such are pretty marginal though. I suppose you should compare it with AWS and the like?

[1] https://www.duiadns.net

cheapest way is to sign up with a dynamic DNS service like http://freedns.afraid.org/ - choose a subdomain you like. Then run an agent on your server to monitor when/if your public IP changes - it will send the new IP to the dynamic DNS.

If you'd prefer a paid option that uses your own domain, then some providers like Digital Ocean expose DNS settings via API. Here's a google search to get you started: https://www.google.com/search?q=dynamic+dns+host+for+digital...

Afraid.org is great, note that you don't necessarily need to install any software to use it - you're given a line to paste into your crontab and it's setup. It simply wget/curls an update URL every few minutes.

Any reason they chose "Afraid" as their name? A name is just a name, but it feels a bit offputting to use that in the address of my home server, tbh.

I don't know, but they have many different domains to choose from. I'm not sure if you can even get a subdomain of afraid.org.

Ddns used to be a fancy thing, but these days everyone worth anything has their own API for DNS management. Providers specialising in ddns may have their own agents which make it easier, but you can also use a 3-line script to do it on route53.

CNAME'ing your own domain to a "dynamic DNS" provider is also an option.

Note that when using this approach, you shouldn't use the root domain; you can still use a subdomain with no issues though.

[0]: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/why-cant-a-domain-s-root-b... [1]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cname-flattening-rfc...

If you just want it accessible from any of your other devices in a secure/private way without fussing much with DNS and port forwarding, ZeroTier is an excellent modern solution.

https://zerotier.com/

I cannot really tell you about asymmetrical speeds because in the country we leave now almost all fiber connections are symmetric.

The main thing use to be the dynamic IP assignation, which can be solved using some services like no-ip or using Cloudflare API to update a DNS periodically.

Some routers (e.g. Asus) come with a free service to do that out the box. That'll be MyButterfly.asuscomm.com domain though.

>asymmetrical upload/download speeds of most home connections?

If it's something fibre like then it's probably enough for casual hosting

If you stick it behind Cloudflare then your limited upload isn't really going to matter for a simple website as it should end up cached.

>> Can you give it a domain name?

I have set up Google Cloud DNS which is updated every 15 minutes to my current external IP. This ends up costing $0.15/mo.

CloudFlare Argo Tunnel