Sorry if I’m mistaken on this, but I’m still new to self-hosting.

Currently I use SyncThing and I love it. My files are accessible to me wherever I am in the world, and it costs me nothing.

I’d like to move more of my life to self-hosted servers. I’m looking at leaving Spotify for Funkwhale. But if I’m reading the materials correctly, I’ll need to set up a domain and pay some upfront costs to make my library accessible outside my home.

Why is that? Is there a way to make my costs 0, the way they are with SyncThing?

  • tvcvt@lemmy.mlEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    The two pieces of software have very different topologies.

    In very broad strokes: Something like FunkWhale uses a server-client model. To get to it, you connect to it remotely and you need some way to get there. By contrast Syncthing behaves as a mesh of nodes. Each node connects directly to the other nodes and the syncthing project folks host relays that help introduce the nodes to one another and penetrate NAT.

    No, you may not need a paid domain to use your self-hosted FunkWhale server (I haven’t dabbled with that service in particular). There are a few options.

    1. You could probably use the direct public IP address or alternatively
    2. Use a dynamic DNS provider (like afraid.org) to resolve your IP address
    3. Use a VPN on all of your clients and use local DNS to resolve your FunkWhale server’s local IP address.

    These all assume that you have a public IP address on your router and not one that’s being NAT-ed by your ISP.

    Again, these are very broad strokes, but hopefully it helps point your in a direction for some research.