It’s a bit more than just buying the domain. You also need to pay someone to do some minimal hosting of that domain, at the very least you need a DNS server. Ideally you need a hoster that supports some kind of dynamic DNS, so that you can easily update your DNS whenever you reconnect to the internet.
This is needed because typically a home internet connection uses a floating IP address, allocated from a pool, and it is not the same every time. You can request a static IP address from your service provider, but that adds even more costs.
GoDaddy tends to be the easiest way to register your own domain. And if you are not scared of a bit of scripting, you can make your own dynamic dns.
Or… if your requirement is just HomeAssistant, just use Nabu casa.
Thanks! Yeah I guess I’m finding Asus’ service a bit more convenient in that case. I don’t want to do anything else. My understanding is that MicroTik also offers this service free of charge. Really don’t understand why something as premium as Ubiquiti can’t do the same.
I also used to use No-IP until I discovered that my ISP (Afrihost) has their own DDNS enabled which is essentially your productusername.ip.afrihost.co.za which works perfectly for me. So if you are using Afrihost as an ISP that’s also already there (just need to forward the ports).
Or go Godaddy and use Cloudflare, safer and pretty easy, I think HA has an addon. Port forwarding/dns to home IP is great however being a ddos victim isnt.
If you connect to the VPN, it’s like you are on your home LAN, so the same as at home.
(I don’t have Ubiquity, but that is how I set it up with my mikrotik).
So that part I understand. The part I don’t know how it would work is:
How to configure a VPN on my router
How to connect to it with my iPhone
On 2 I see I can add a VPN configuration on my iPhone, presumably that would work.
On 1, I assume I’ll have to go into my ASUS router (that I currently still have) and see how that would work. Presumably I’d still require some type of DNS service?
As you can see, I need to understand exactly how I would set this up and what I’ll need for it to work… Networking equipment is expensive!
My go-to networking man has commented as follows:
With all of the attachments in his house he should certainly go for a mesh network to cover his usage. These are cheap and reliable. Try TPlink.
It does not matter what point to point he is using. The current generation from Ubiquiti are all good.
I must say, I have a TP-Link Mesh (Deco E4) in my house. The Tasmota/Sonoff devices were not happy with the IOT network from the Decos. The plan was to move everything to the mesh, but I had to turn the 2.4Ghz back on on the old router, and made the Mesh 5Ghz only. That was the only way I could get it to work reliably. One Blackview tablet refused to connect reliably to the mesh (strangely just one, the other one seems happy). One issue I had for a long time, where Sonoff devices (and also my Victron EVCS) sometimes disconnect from the Wi-Fi and would not reconnect, got worse on the mesh.
So right now I don’t know what to make of it. It seems all the issues I had with reliability remained after the change. Sometimes a mesh network doesn’t solve those issues.
I do however have much better coverage now. That’s rather excellent.
