Do you need a domain name if you are hosting a Lemmy instance, or will it work fine with just an ip-address + port (e.g. <username>@<ip-address>:<port>)?

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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    1 year ago

    It requires an HTTPS connection, and certificates can only be obtained for domain names. So yes, pretty much.

    Also consider than IPs can change, even if you’re using a hosting provider. Domain names makes changing the IP much easier.

    Domain names can be obtained for as cheap as $3/year for the xyz TLD. If you can’t pay for anything, there’s also free services that can let you get a subdomain, like noip.com, afraid.org, azote.org.

    • andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun
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      1 year ago

      The reason being that federation means other instances send you things. It’s not pull-only, or else you could likely get away with private instances sitting behind NAT. But since activitypub involves publishing to inboxes from source to destination, they need some way to reach you. And since we want to validate that connection and that some external authority can vouch for ita ownership, we use TLS Certs with the DNS hostname that matches your server name.

    • idle@158436977.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Also if you dont mind numbers .xyz domains can be like $1 a year. It has to be only numbers and i think at least 9 digits.

      • happy_saw@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Sorry but do you mean that .xyz domains only allow for a numbers only domain name? Because I don’t think that’s true.

        • idle@158436977.xyz
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          1 year ago

          No i mean if you want a super cheap .xyz domain, its very cheap if you choose a domain that is digits only. For example my lemmy domain is 158436977.xyz. its 89 cents a year.

          You can certainly have xyz domains that are words just like any other.

  • Brendan McKenzie@lemmy.bmck.au
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    1 year ago

    I haven’t dug into the protocol, but I’d imagine communication would be done over HTTPS, which requires a domain.

  • Matt@netmonkey.tech
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    1 year ago

    I can’t imagine it’d work without a domain, as your instance will need to talk HTTPS with other instances.