About to become awful: Free Netgear Dynamic DNS

[JackdawFool]

When I first got my RAX200 it was hard to believe it was limited to only having the choice of three DDNS providers, but at least the built-in "NETGEAR" option through NO-IP was free. A year later and now I receive an email saying that to continue to use the free Netgear NO-IP service, I'll have to respond monthly to a nag-ware email, or my hostname will be deleted. This is equivalent to the normal free NO-IP ddns offering, which is super disappointing. What then is the point of using Netgear's offering? Will Netgear be renewing their agreement with NO-IP to remove this annoyance or offering a different solution as a replacement?

Here's the email:

We are emailing you to inform you of a policy change for your  hostname (mynetgear.com), powered by No-IP.

Beginning March 1, 2021, all free mynetgear.com hostnames will be required to be confirmed once every 30 days, or they will be deleted from our system.

What action do I need to take?

You will receive an email 7 days before your hostname requires confirmation. To confirm your hostname, simply click the confirmation link in your email. If you forget to confirm your hostname, we’ll send you another email a week later.

When will I receive my first confirmation notice?

Be on the lookout for your first confirmation email between March 1 and March 14, 2021. You can also login to your No-IP account after March 1 to see when your hostname will require confirmation.

What happens if I don’t confirm my hostname?

If you don't confirm your hostname within 14 days after your first confirmation notice, your hostname will be removed from your account and DNS and will no longer resolve.

Can I keep my free mynetgear.com hostname?

Yes, mynetgear.com Dynamic DNS will always be free. Simply follow the confirmation prompts and you can continue using your hostname free of charge.

Don’t want to be bothered with the confirmation process?

Upgrade to Enhanced Dynamic DNS. Benefits of upgrading include:

Removes 30-day hostname confirmation
Hostnames don't get deleted every 30 days
Allows you to create up to 25 hostnames
Removes advertisements on redirects
Advanced records like SRV, TXT records and domain keys
Email and Phone Support

[vinmassaro]

Created an account here to add to this post. If Netgear isn't going to renew with NoIP to keep the free offering free, please add more DDNS providers like Namecheap.

[markbloke]

20% off offer though. Only infinitely more than you're paying now.
Normally it's $24.95 a year (or if you subscribe for 10 years it's a bargain $249.50 saving you a massive $0.00).

[avtella]

The 30 day click to renew thing if I recall was there before a few years back, I just returned to using this so I was surprised by the email, didn't realize they took that annoyance out in the interrim lol. Guess it's back to how it was back then.

[motoolfan71]

This is very frustrating!! Netgear needs to add free options (duckdns) or it's going to be time to look for other router/switch options.

[unbelievable]

This is completely unacceptable.

A non expiring Dynamic DNS account is a FEATURE of many Netgear routers, and I specifically purchased and recommended these devices based on their advertised feature set.

Netgear, you cannot REMOVE a feature that your customers have already paid for in the original cost of the device. Now that you are doing this, will you be providing partial refunds to cover the cost of a feature that your customers have already paid for?

To rub further salt into the wound, for DECADES you have deliberately limited the selection of DDNS providers in your routers to only paid-for services like Dyn and No-IP.

In all this time you could have easily added a "generic" DDNS provider option and let your customers select a custom URL for updates, but you have chosen not to and the only reason I can think of is that you have monetary contracts with these paid-for providers to force your customers to use them.

I will no longer be using or recommending Netgear routers because I cannot trust a device that has features removed unexpectedly without explanation and without equivalent alternative options provided.

[m-i-k-e]

This is so user unfriendly. I understand they want to cut back on accounts not being used. Can they just check that IPs are updating and there are dns lookups on the records?

Add this to the list of reasons I don't feel comfortable recommending Netgear to anyone tech savy.

[markbloke]

Thought about flashing the router with DD-WRT but I'm now using DuckDNS kept updated via a Raspberry Pi i'm already using for Home Assistant.
Seems you can also run the update client on an esp32 board available for a couple of dollars. If your router has a usb socket you're not using you can even power it from there. A bit messy thanks to penny-pinching from Netgear but needs must......

[markbloke]

Actually it also runs on an ESP8266 - even cheaper!

[JackdawFool]

That's funny, I did the exact same thing immediately after posting this topic (getting DuckDNS running on a raspberry pi behind my router). I have it updating every five minutes as per the default DuckDNS install instructions... In looking at the generated log file, I'm noticing that I'm getting 502 Bad Gateway errors on the refresh intermittently, but often (maybe 50% of the time)... Are you seeing that too?

Flashing with DD-WRT isn't an option, right? I would totally do that... Thought that wasn't supported on this chipset, but haven't been keeping up with DD-WRT.

But back on topic, it's ridiculous that this is yet another feature that this $600 router doesn't have. To support something like DuckDNS all it needs to be able to do is hit a simple user specified URL every X minutes. And as far as I know, the rest of the firmware is still terrible (I'm running what I assume is ancient V1.0.1.12_1.0.41 still because it's the only one I know of where I can get it to not drop the LAN speed to 50% of my gigabit connection). Very disastisfied with netgear...

[motoolfan71]

I had been running Kong's build of dd-wrt for years, until I moved and able to get 1Gb service and needed the acceleration that the stock fw afforded. Which is when I realized that netgear didn't support duckdns and I thought, well atleast Netgear has a free ddns. A month later I get the email, smdh. 

[motoolfan71]

I've had a duckdns account running in homeassistant and will use it until I figure out what I'm going to do long term.

[unbelievable]

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@JackdawFool wrote:

I have it updating every five minutes as per the default DuckDNS install instructions... In looking at the generated log file, I'm noticing that I'm getting 502 Bad Gateway errors on the refresh intermittently, but often (maybe 50% of the time)... Are you seeing that too?

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Yes, it seems to be rate limiting or lacking enough server resources but either way it still works okay overall considering its widespread use by malware authors due to it being completely free to use.

[unbelievable]

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@m-i-k-e wrote:

This is so user unfriendly. I understand they want to cut back on accounts not being used.

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It's not really that, it's more that Netgear are no longer willing to pay No-IP for the facility to use non-expiring accounts, despite the fact that Netgear's customers have already paid for devices that include non-expiring DDNS accounts as an advertised feature.

[anygreg]

just got my renewal 30 day notification from No Ip this is total BS, Netgear have gone back on what i agreed when purchasing. 

hopefully more people will see this thread regarding the 30 expire Mynetgear dns with no IP.

just a few tags to keep the thread in google searches and highlight this issue for others searching for solutions and to make thema aware of this.

[unbelievable]

This is much worse than originally thought.

It's not just a single click of a link in an email. You have to:

1) Click the link in the email

2) Click a button to confirm

3) Answer a CAPTCHA

4) Click to confirm

This is a HORRIBLE downgrade - so Netgear, when will be receiving our partial refunds for a service that we paid real money for through the cost of the devices?

[avtella]

Considering back in the day when I had an R7000 and had just gotten the R7800 the 30 day NO-IP renewal thing was normal... Seems they likley had a deal with NO-IP sometime afterwards, it's just back to where it was before... While yes it's definately annoying if you got used to their prior change, technically it's still free and just back to the old way again, you're not getting any refunds. Infact I doubt they even advertised with the routers that they even took out the 30 day thing in the first place when that change occured, it was just an added bonus and it's now gone.

[anygreg]

You mentioned this already in this thread?

Anyway, I think it would be easy enough for netgear to actually offer this service within the netgear domain rather than subing it out to a 3rd party or allow us to manually enter dns details feely instead of pinning us to these rip off dns providers. Absolute BS and slack on Netgears behalf.

[avtella]

It would be better if they also actuallly opened up the DynamicDNS options to more providers.....

[anygreg]

That's what I just said above? Do you work for xerox ? 

[unbelievable]

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@avtella wrote:

It would be better if they also actuallly opened up the DynamicDNS options to more providers.....

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Customers have been requesting this thousands of times for over a decade though, so why would they open this up now? They obviously have a monetary contract with the big rip-off providers with terms that prohibit the use of alternative services.

[avtella]

I for got to add the "Yes" in front of that last post in agreement.... my appologies if the mistake offended you lol.

[schumaku]

It's also required to hae a custom option to allow any de-facto standards compliant DDNS updates - not just what some PLM just finds sexy enough to integrate.

[schumaku]

Oh Netgear: Any USD 9.99 router maker (sold from the crap table for USD 4.99 OBO) does this better.

[pkdrive]

Quite annoyed by the wasted time reasearching alternative services only to find there are no others allowed... I was convinced I was missing something that the only free option would be taken away without an alternative (the nag email option is not a reasonable alternative).

Please add a more flexible DDNS setup now that the "free" deal has been dropped (which I presume should have been a key part of the exclusivity agreement with no-ip).