Is there a way to host an IRC server without giving away the server's IP address? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- magnora7 · 2019-03-20 23:46 We have a server but we don't want to make the IP address public, but would like for others to be able to connect to it externally using their own IRC apps. We want the IP address to remain hidden so people would connect with the URL, or with some other IP addres. Ideally like irc.saidit.net (our site is saidit.net) Is this easily possible? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2019-03-21 00:18 > We want the IP address to remain hidden so people would connect with the URL, or with some other IP addres. Ideally like irc.saidit.net (our site is saidit.net) Well you can always give out a DNS name, that isn't a problem. > We have a server but we don't want to make the IP address public But that would require a proxy. I'm not sure there is any trustworthy free proxy for that purpose and if you are going to pay for a service might as well put it on a public server you don't care about having a public address. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-03-21 00:38 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- magnora7 · 2019-03-21 01:03 Thank you for the help. I would like to just have a DNS name, but it can be traced to an IP pretty easily. So we have to hide it behind cloudflare because we don't want our main server to be DDOS'd. If we have a DNS mapping to our static IP, then it exposes our real IP instead of our cloudflare IP, so it gets rid of of our DDOS protection. But IRC can't connect through the cloudflare-generated IP. See what I mean? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2019-03-21 01:20 > But IRC can't connect through the cloudflare-generated IP. Yes you have to pay for non-http proxies on cloudflare. Again I wouldn't really trust any free offering for that, the proxy can read all traffic to the server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- frumious · 2019-03-21 02:12 Why do you not want to expose the IRC server's IP address? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- magnora7 · 2019-03-21 02:14 Because then the main http server is open to DDOSes and we only have 1 server. Which is why we have it behind cloudflare, which generates an IP mask for the DNS. But IRC can't go through cloudflare without paying extra money. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- magnora7 · 2019-03-21 02:16 > Yes you have to pay for non-http proxies on cloudflare. So at that point I might as well just get another server with a new IP address, since it's going to cost money. A new server that can do this will probably cost $5-15 per month. I imagine cloudflare's non-http proxies will cost about the same, right? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- frumious · 2019-03-21 02:17 I don't really follow this argument but for like 5 bucks a month you could get a WHOLE other VPS for the IRC server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- magnora7 · 2019-03-21 02:19 Yeah I think that might be what we do, possibly. I guess there's no way to do it on our existing server without spending more money? Because we might be running this for years and that adds up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TingPing · 2019-03-21 02:22 > I imagine cloudflare's non-http proxies will cost about the same, right? AFAICT no, it seems to be an expensive enterprise option. I believe getting a new server is the better solution. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- magnora7 · 2019-03-21 03:42 Oh okay. Thanks for the info! I guess we will just get a new server ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-03-21 15:13 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rockintheairwaves · 2019-03-23 18:05 You could always run it as a Tor hidden service. That would accomplish what you seek. However, it means users will need to be running Tor, and have their IRC clients configured to connect via such, for them to access it. Otherwise, a $5 DigitalOcean instance is probably your best bet. It'll handle InspIRCd and Atheme nicely. You could probably get away with running KiwiIRC on it as well if you'd like to enable web-based chats. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sudosudoo · 2019-03-24 02:36 thats the pussy way of doing it though. it feels much better to figure out shit yourself ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrLN1x · 2019-03-29 01:52 OVH is better and cheaper, $3 and free ddos prot ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrLN1x · 2019-03-29 01:53 I was about to leave the comment about Tor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrLN1x · 2019-03-29 01:53 He doesn't want anyone to connect! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- FluoridePsychosis · 2019-04-21 17:10 Hiding the IP won't help with this? ​ You can run it through Tor or I2P but it is not easy to set this up, you need technical knowledge, and your users will also need to use these services. Also it won't help with DDOS because you don't need to know the IP for that. DDOS is literally just sending lots of requests to whatever. You can DDOS a tor hidden service or an I2P eepsite.