Domain Name System

The DNS translates website addresses into IP addresses that enable our computers to connect to web servers around the world.  There are three easy to use options that we'll explore.

Using Cloudflare

Cloudflare offers a free service that can handle the translation from your domain name, such as interpretive.tech, to the IP address your router was assigned by your internet Service provider.  This can additionally provide DDoS and other protections such as 'under attack mode'.

We will need to configure our domain name provider to use the CloudFlare nameservers.  The nameservers for you to use are available on the CloudFlare account page.  Once our domain name is configured to direct traffic to cloudflare, we need to configure Cloudflare to direct traffic to our server.

Because we do not have a static IP address from our internet service provider, it is possible for it to change anytime our router restarts.  Just like we set our computer server to use a static IP within our network, your ISP can do that for your router.  If you do not pay for this service, then they may assign you another one at any time.

Manual setup of DNS

You can manually set the address to forward internet traffic to.  This is great if you have a static IP from your internet service provider.  Otherwise, your IP address may change at any time and you will need to update it to get your server working again.

Automatic

Linuxserver offers a docker service image for ddclient, which we can configure to check our IP address occasionally to update it on CloudFlare if it changes.

This requires creating an API key and configuring ddclient.