I got so good at optimizing $3 VPS servers' performance that I want to buy https://shitbox.engineering domain and start a company.

Found only one place that offers that.

Found only one place that offers that.

What are you hosting there?

@iiii oh, all sorts of things!

Fun fact.

Get any old computer you have. Install the most bare bones Linux you can do.
Hook it up to your Ethernet/wifi.
You have the equivalent of a $30/hour vps for only $2/day.

@CoreFusionX install coolify for local vercel/netlify/s3/whatever

Self hosting ftw, but also home lab cost a lot of moneys!

@CoreFusionX the only issue is NAT

@CoreFusionX good enough for home lab, but not good enough for a client-facing service that will cost me money if it goes offline

especially given that power outages are common where I live

@iiii

You can easily port forward anything you need even in consumer grade routers.

Static public IPs might also be a problem, but at least in Spain/Portugal I can pay for them or extend the DHCP lease for like, decades. (My home IP is not static but hasn't changed ever since I got internet, and it's been 8 years and counting).

@kiki

Yeah, bad reliability in electric supply can easily become the biggest barrier.

@CoreFusionX very much depends on the provider. You can forward on your router, but the upstream router might easily reject your forward

@iiii

Port forwarding works at level 3 boundaries, it does not matter what is beyond your router. Your router has an assigned public IP, and shit using that IP will reach your router, where it gets port forwarded to the appropriate box.

The only thing similar to what you say is actually having CG-NAT, which if you have, you can request your ISP for it to be turned off, and if not, well, just change ISP, to be honest.

@CoreFusionX it depends on the provider. You cannot assume that you get a public upstream IP just beyond your router. You can easily have a second NAT level, and your port forwarding will do nothing in the end.

@iiii

Yes, as I said, you might have CG-NAT.

What I'm trying to say it's that port forwarding has *nothing* to do with NAT, and is actually, completely local to any given level 3 device.

It's only a matter of "requests to this public *port* are to go to this local IP and local port. Note how the public IP had no role there. Nothing that happens beyond your router can affect your port forwarding.

NAT *can* break your external reachability, but there are other solutions for that.

@CoreFusionX fine, if you want to go into meaningless technicalities