When working with our service tracking the public IP is important, without it, the system doesn’t know where to apply the filtering rules. This is especially true when using IPv4.
To help account for this, we created a series of articles that guide you through the process of keeping your public IP updated in your dashboard using our dynamic device feature:
This, however, can be problematic when a device is constantly moving and the public IP of the network continues to change. In a perfect world, the public IP change would happen in the router, but our dynamic device option is not available in routers.
If your router does have a built-in Dynamic DNS feature, this guide is for you. If your router supports another service, here is another option:
This does not apply to the Free plans.
Configure Windows
Before you configure our Dynamic Device, note that our dashboard supports Dynamic DNS (DynDNS and similar services) out of the box, so if you use one of them, all you have to do is add your DynDNS domain on the “Your Network” settings page.
If you don’t have a DynDNS domain, you can use our own Generic Device config to keep your IP address in sync (go to Step 1 bellow).
Step 1: Add new Device to Dynamic Devices
Inside the CleanBrowsing application you want to navigate to the settings page. On this page you will find a panel titled, Dynamic Devices:
1- Under Settings
2- Click on Your Network
3- Select the right Profile
4- Enter a name for the device
Add the name that will make sense later. For instance, in this example, I chose Home Mac. This is important because you want to be able to know which device it is. It’s also good to be mindful if you’re trying to account for a dynamic public IP on your home network or a dynamic public IP on a device that travels.
Things to Consider:
If this is for your local network, deploy this on a device that is stationary in the network. For instance, my house changes public IP from time to time. So I configure this on a Home Computer.
If you are going to use this on a mobile computer, a laptop that you travel with, it’s best to create a new profile, then add the device to the specific profile.
This new device will provide you a unique URL that any time you click on it, it will connect your current IP address to your CleanBrowsing account.
Step 2: Configure a Dynamic Device
You will want to set up a recurring task to ping the URL provided above. On Windows you do this by using the built-in Windows Task Scheduler. You open the application by typing Task Scheduler in the Cortana search box.
Select the Create Task option.
Name your task (example: CleanBrowsing Dynamic IP)
Create a new trigger that tells your system to check the IP ever 5 minutes. You do this by clicking the Triggers tab. Be mindful of the time you set in the Repeat task every: section, this will define the frequency.
Next, you want to create the new Action and you do that by selecting the Actions tab. You will use the Program/Script and Add Arguments section. Curl is located here on most Windows installations (C:\Windows\System32\curl.exe)
You will use curl as the program / script, and you will use the dynamic device link provided in Step 1 inside the add argument section.
Example of the full link: https://my.cleanbrowsing.org/dynip/172e84ea
With that your device will run a scheduler every 5 minutes checking to see if the public IP has changed, if it has it updates your profile in the Your network section with the new public IP.