[HN Gopher] Show HN: A tool to self host game servers with a fre...
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Show HN: A tool to self host game servers with a free static IP
Author : patricklorio
Score : 50 points
Date : 2021-06-09 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (playit.gg)
(TXT) w3m dump (playit.gg)
| nickspacek wrote:
| I thought that virtual hosts for TCP would be an interesting
| feature to have to support multiple services on a single port. I
| remember reading about this years back:
| http://www.litech.org/~brian/tcphosts/paper.html
| mStreamTeam wrote:
| If anyone is interested, you can setup your own tunnel sever like
| this with FRP.
|
| Plus its open source
|
| https://github.com/fatedier/frp
| sockaddr wrote:
| My coworker's kid uses zerotier to maintain a private gaming
| network with static IPs for all their friends. Does your system
| have anything similar or is it just out in the open? Taking a
| cursory glance at your page it's hard to tell exactly what is
| being done. Looks cool though.
| infogulch wrote:
| Does this also work for consoles or just pcs?
| patricklorio wrote:
| At the moment the program only run on PCs, however a few
| users have figured out how to run it on mobile. But that's
| just for the server, the server that is tunneled can be
| connected to by anything. We have a few users hosting
| Minecraft Bedrock servers that are being connected to by
| mobile and consoles.
| oauea wrote:
| How are people tunneling their console over the zerotier
| vpn? I assume this requires zerotier to be installed on the
| gateway, which is a bit beyond most users sadly :(
| atatatat wrote:
| > a few users have figured out how to run it on mobile
|
| Mobile hotspot//USB tether forwarding your VPN.
| patricklorio wrote:
| Oh, I was speaking for playit.gg, not sure about
| zerotier. I misread the comment thread.
| sjnair96 wrote:
| Just fyi, I've found Tailscale to be excellent for this
| purpose. I just created a new google account, for sharing with
| friends and family to log in to tailscale, and it's completely
| free. A relay on my Raspberry pi allow me to expose select
| devices to those connected to my tailscale.
|
| Easy, magical NAT traversal.
|
| - https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/
|
| Edit: Oh wow. I just ran into innernet. Looks like a self-
| hosted FOSS alternative to tailscale, and also cool blog
|
| - https://blog.tonari.no/introducing-innernet
| patricklorio wrote:
| This system is a little simpler, it creates a public endpoint
| that will tunnel traffic to the game server over the playit
| program. So when the program and game server are running,
| anyone can connect to the server through the public address.
|
| It has the advantage that only the server needs to run a
| program. It also does a few tricks like mapping each client's
| public IP to a LAN IP like 127.5.21.3 so ip banning /
| whitelisting still works in game.
| sockaddr wrote:
| Gotcha, nice work
| Syonyk wrote:
| It looks like there's a tunnel app... could I use it to tunnel
| other stuff if I got creative? I'm behind CGNAT with Starlink on
| one of my connections, and I wouldn't mind a freebie tunnel to,
| say, a webserver in there...
| tengbretson wrote:
| If this doesn't work out for your needs, I've had good results
| using Cloudflare Argo Tunnel so far.
| patricklorio wrote:
| Yes, you're free to tunnel whatever you like with the custom
| TCP and UDP tunnels. We have users tunneling their SSH and FTP
| servers and all sorts of things. Though if the bandwidth starts
| disrupting game severs, I may need to reconsider :).
| cs0 wrote:
| Have you tried ngrok? https://ngrok.com
| ev1 wrote:
| How can I self host this for an arbitrary game TCP port? I'd be
| happy to pay for a "limited feature" edition (don't need source
| either) that will:
|
| - let me self host with binaries, public IP server on Linux,
| private IP server on Windows
|
| - map IPs so that the gameserver running on Windows can issue IP
| bans
|
| - I don't need hostname-picking or unique ports
| patricklorio wrote:
| If you download and run the program it will launch the web
| browser to https://playit.gg/manage. On that page you should be
| able to add a Custom TCP tunnel. I don't quite follow the
| features you're looking for but I think the custom TCP tunnel
| should cover a good bit.
|
| As for banning IPs, public IPs are mapped to local IPs (for
| example 127.3.5.6) so in game banning should work. I have
| thought about creating a premium tier that lets you add
| firewall rules to the edge (our tunnel servers) so the traffic
| you filter never gets tunneled to you.
| jjice wrote:
| There's also good ol' (newish?) WireGuard on a relay VPS. But I
| understand how it'd be another extra step that could get in the
| way for someone unfamiliar with the tech.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| WireGuard is terrible. ZeroTier is so much better.
| gouggoug wrote:
| Would you mind expanding on this? How do wireguard and
| zerotier compare to each other?
| BossingAround wrote:
| This seems to create long-running tunnel sessions, doesn't it? If
| so, that seems to me to potentially create load that's too great
| for the service to be free.
| patricklorio wrote:
| That is correct. It's been difficult, I've had to rebuild the
| entire system 4 times finding new optimizations here and there.
| I'm at break even cost wise from people purchasing custom
| domains for $1/month, or $6/year.
|
| The latest version, v4 is performing really well and is helping
| me keep costs low while we're getting more users.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Looks convenient. I assume multiple servers share the same IP(s)
| on different non-default ports? I don't see any info on how this
| works on the site.
|
| I can't imagine providing a free unique static IPv4 for 4000+
| active servers would be a sustainable business model. IPv6 of
| course would be fine, if residential ISPs ever leave the Stone
| Age. (Looking at you, Bell Canada)
| patricklorio wrote:
| Yes, I'm assigning a random port to each tunnel. I have been
| considering purchasing an IP space to offer a premium version
| but it's hard to make the numbers work at my current scale.
|
| Minecraft is quite nice as it supports SRV records so the
| provided tunnel address doesn't need to show the port number.
| For other games you'll notice you have the non standard port.
| CraftThatBlock wrote:
| Careful with this, as some Java versions on some Linux
| distributions (such as Java 11 on Ubuntu/Arch) does not work
|
| https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-175531
| jagger27 wrote:
| > Minecraft is quite nice as it supports SRV records
|
| Oh that's nifty!
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(page generated 2021-06-09 23:01 UTC)