I don’t have access to my router and my ISP charges for port forwarding (I think they might have a CGNAT setup?).
I’m trying to work around that since I want to start hosting some apps and game servers from my PC. I’m seeing a lot of talk about tailscale as a possible solution to this but honestly I’m a bit confused with all the options and whether this is actually the proper tool for the job.
Assuming it is, do I go the route of setting up a “tailscale funnel” or a “subnet”? Will other people have to install tailscale too if they want to join my servers? People also mention Netmaker or Cloudflared Tunnel, although it also seems like cloudflare doesn’t want their tunnels used for game and media traffic?
The more expensive option I guess would be just paying for protonvp premium since it offers port forwarding in that case, but I’m not sure about performance and whether it’s worth it, at that point I might just rent a server instead.
Hoping you folks at self-hosted have more ideas on how can I, well… self host instead of throwing money at the problem.
Tailscale funnels allow people on the internet to connect to a Tailscale domain and they will be connected to your server at home through a secure tunnel.
Tailscale subnets allow a device using Tailscale to expose devices that are not using Tailscale in their LAN to other nodes in the tailnet. So if for example you use Tailscale on your phone when you’re on vacation and you have a subnet on a PC at home also using Tailscale, you can reach a network printer on your LAN at home even if that printer is not running Tailscale.
There’s one more interesting thing you can do with Tailscale and that’s an exit node. When you make a Tailscale device an exit node it will let other Tailscale devices connect to the internet as if they were the first device. It’s useful when you’re away from home at a hotel or airport wifi and want a secure connection, because the connection will be encrypted due to Tailscale. Can also be used to appear at home when you’re traveling for whatever reason (trick Netflix in showing you the catalog from your home country, pretend to be at home when working remotely etc.) It acts like a VPN service in a way.