Cisco Umbrella Dynamic Update API

Cisco Umbrella provides an API to dynamically update your registered network's IP address.  The API is available at updates.opendns.com.

The API is a simple way to keep your Umbrella Network IP addresses up to date when using a dynamic public IP address.   This method is widely supported by many clients including third-party routers.

NOTE: We do not recommend using DNS-O-Matic for Umbrella customers, instead, using this API is a more robust and easily used way to achieve the same thing for most customers.

Performing Dynamic Updates

Many third-party routers and other devices will automatically perform Dynamic Updates for you.  Simply configure the device with the following Dynamic Update settings:

• Server:  updates.opendns.com
• Protocol:  HTTPS
• Port:  443
• Hostname:  <Umbrella Network Name>
• User:  Umbrella username (e-mail)
• Password:  Umbrella password

By default you authenticate using the normal username/password used to login to your Umbrella account. Umbrella support can generate a secondary password to use for Dynamic Updates only. Organizations using SSO or SAML are required to use a secondary password.

API Information

The command used for manual or scripted updates is as follows:

curl -v -u "<user>:<password>" https://updates.opendns.com/nic/update?hostname=<Umbrella Network Name>

This is an implementation of the Remote Access Update API designed by Dyn. All clients that support this API completely and communicate over SSL will properly update Umbrella network IP address information.

For complete documentation regarding the API please see the Dyn Website.

Umbrella uses the standard Dynamic DNS result codes, but we have modified the use of some of these codes to add key functionality. The meaning of each result code is documented below. 

Note:  Current web browsers will not support embedded credential in URLs as noted in https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3986.txt