Dynamic DNS: a subdomain with a dynamic IP

In both business and personal settings, you may need to access your network from outside: for example, to reach a private cloud or NAS storage system in your office from an external connection, to have a test web server for showing clients projects hosted locally, or simply to connect from a remote computer for management and configuration tasks.

This gets complicated on networks without a fixed IP, so to make this kind of access easier people often turn to services such as noip.com, which let you create a subdomain linked to a dynamic IP and keep it updated whenever the IP changes.

To avoid depending on external services and domains, cPanel includes Dynamic DNS, a simple tool you can use to create custom subdomains on your own domains and link them to dynamic IPs, keeping the IP updated automatically. This is achieved with short refresh times in the DNS zones (so IP changes take effect within seconds) and a system of calls to a public URL from the computer or network to keep the IP up to date.

If you want to know more, see the manual on using and setting up subdomains with a dynamic IP.