BBS IP Question reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Conscious-Bug-2918 · 2020-11-17 14:32 I Am Setting Up A Synchronet BBS And Cannot Find Any Assistance In How To Let Others Know How To Connect To My BBS I don't want my Home IP Address Known. But I see Alot Of BBses with a 4 digit ip. How Do I go about getting this 4 digit IP? Also I see Like when I go To A BBS from My discord My Browser doesnt seem to load any telnet browser or is it just loading my MobaXterm Browser I use for Local Access? This is so different then my days in the 80s with cbase on my c64 Please Help In Any Way Possible So I can once again Join The BBS Community Thanx To All. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CharlieBrown197 · 2020-11-17 15:09 The 4 digit "IP" you are seeing is the port number. You need an IP (or domain) to log into a BBS. If no port number is listed, the default of 23 is used. You cannot have people not be able to trace your IP address unless you can find a VPN service that is willing to let you run it through there (unlikely for security risks) or you want to rent some server space from an external company. May cost you some, but not more than like $5/month, if that's worth it to you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- redbrickchimney · 2020-11-17 16:42 you can get a yourbbsname.synchro.net domain name. ppl will always be able to get your IP tho ---------------------------------------------------------------------- banksy_h8r · 2020-11-17 17:23 If you want people to be able to connect, they _have_ to know the IP, even if DNS does a name->IP translation for them. How else could it work? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Android8675 · 2020-11-17 18:54 Think of your IP address (the 4 digit number or the 6 digit confusing (ipv6)) as your home's geolocation (lat/long), and your domain (www.bbs.com) as your street address. The USPS could deliver your mail if they knew the Lat and Long of your home (aerial bombardments probably), but what's easier is to assign numbers, street names, cities, and states to all the homes they service. So the USPS looks at your ZIP which directs them to a State and City, then looks at your street, and finally your home number so it knows now where to drop off your amazon packages. They could you something like an Lat/Long coords, but the address is easier to read, and both point to the same location. Now your BBS/Computer/Internet at home has an IP address, actually every device on the Internet has one. If you do WHOIS: Google.com you'll see that Google's IP is 8.8.8.8. My BBS is currently at 73.189.234.131 (shodanscore.com) You can put 73.189.234.131 into a web browser and my boards website will come up (well, you'll get a SSH warning, but it should respond), OR you can enter shodanscore.com and your web browser will ask a DNS (Domain Name Server) where shodanscore.com is, and the DNS will say, "Oh, it's over at 73.189.234.131" So if you want a nice cool domain, you need to first buy a domain (I use namecheap.com) and then you need set the DNS record for that domain to the IP address you want that traffic to go to. I'm using DNSExit.com as my DNS because it's free, but I think you can use the one on namecheap easily enough. The other option is to setup [Synchronet's DynDNS](http://wiki.synchro.net/module:dyndns) module that'll give you a .synchro.net domain that always points to your computers IP Address on the Internet. (Free, Rob Swendell operates that service via his Vertreuvian BBS). I would do the later, and once you get that working you can decide if you want to get your own domain. Oh, keep in mind that once people get to your IP address if you're computer is behind a Router you'll have to tell the router which computer to send traffic too, but that's another topic. Good luck ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2020-11-17 20:25 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2020-11-17 21:27 Others have pretty much said what I would have said. Your public IP is public, but you can get a domain name for free or a few bucks a year. But like a phone number, people need that to reach you. No real way around that. But as someone has mentioned, you can host your BBS in the cloud and away from your home. Doesn't cost that much these days.