Self-hosting: starting an adventure#
Over next few weeks/posts, I’ll focus solely on self-hosting adventure. To start, beside free time and motivation to learn new things, you will need just a few components:
internet connection with public IP
router allowing port forwarding
server hardware (old computer, old laptop or mini PC)
domain with DNS zone
server software (yunohost)
and apps/services.
Today, let’s just focus on the points 1-2.
Internet connection#
You’ll need stable internet connection with public IP (static or dynamic). Ideally a symmetric fiber, but honestly anything above 100 Mbps would do just fine. (I’m currently very happy user of a symmetric 300 Mbps fiber and honestly I don’t really need anything faster than that!)
My ISP offers affodable fibre connection in Spain and several other EU countries. I was able to get public IP by calling my provider and asking for it. In Spain this service is called Conexión Plus and it (public IP) costs me just 1€ monthly! (Beware, some ISPs I contacted charge insanely for a public IP: it can be easily 10-30€ monthly! Consider switching to more affordable provider if that’s your case.)
My public IP is dynamic, meaining it changes every time a router is restarted. But that’s not a problem, we’ll deal with a dynamic IP in step 3 using DynDNS.
Once you know you can get a public IP, check if your router can forward ports. You will need to connect to your router. Usually it’s under http://192.168.1.1/, password protected and accessible only from a local network. Check your ISP manual for username and password (often user / user). Once in, check if you can forward ports (usually Internet > Security > Port forwarding). You can find all those details in my ISP website (in Spanish). You may need to search your ISP website or call them and ask.
If above works, that’s great. We can move on to the harware.
If you cannot get public IP from your internet service provider (ISP) (1) or if your ISP does not allow acces to your router configuration (2), likely your best alternative would be virtual private server (VPS). Also you may choose to rely on VPS if your electricity/network connection is unstable. There endless VPS providers, although I’d recommend relying on EU providers. (Avoid bigtech, namely amazon, google, microsoft!)
VPS setup is beyond the scope of this post. You can find more information here.
Breakdown of the costs of self-hosting so far:
internet connection: 1€ monthly for public IP.
router with port forwarding: provided by ISP free of charge
Note, we’re paying monthly 25€ for 300 Mbps symmetric fiber. But since this is something a spending I’d be paying without selfhosting, I don’t include it in the final calculation. Btw, in near future we’ll be connected to internal infrasctracture of our ISP (Fibra Smart) reducing our internet bill to only 10€ monthly. At this point we may decide to increase our connection speed to 1 Gbps (20€ monthly). But as I mentioned above, we are comfortable with 300 Mbps right now, so I don’t really see a reason to invest in faster conenction atm…