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Hardware Dynamic DNS Clients and No-IP
Several currently available router/firewall appliances exist that have a No-IP.com compatible Dynamic DNS (DDNS) client built into the device's firmwmare. Many of the manufacturers of these devices work closely with us to test and certify their systems for use with No-IP. For example Symantec, Sonicwall, D-Link, SMC, and Draytek all have built-in support for DDNS from No-IP. So with all that great support and potential ease of use, why do we recommend the use of our own Dynamic Update Client (DUC) software instead?
The software client you can download is always the latest and most up to date version available. Bug fixes and new features won't usually appear in hardware or firmware clients in a timely (if ever) fashion but they'll be on our site in a matter of hours.
If you're using our sub-account feature to segregate and password protect groups of hosts or different locations, there's typically no support for that functionality in the hardware clients.
The software client has extensive logging capabilities and can be used to troubleshoot problems that might arise. Logging functionality in firmware based clients is limited at best. With the software client you will also know instantly when your update goes through.
Configuration of the software client is mostly automated: Provide it with your No-IP username and password and it will download all of the hosts in your account; you can then pick and choose which hosts you'd like dynamically updated with a few mouse clicks. You can set the interval at which the client checks for changes to your IP address, you can specify an alternate port if the client can't communicate with our servers on the standard port for some reason, and you can even schedule other events to happen when an IP address update happens.
In short, while the router based clients are sometimes the only possible solution (think standalone security camera DVR with no PC at the location for example), for most users our software based client is the better choice.
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