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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • It definitely makes it more difficult to switch endpoints manually. I have multiple VPN connections with different exit nodes configured for failover in case one (or more) of them is unreachable. I don’t run into geoblocking issues very often but I also don’t route all my WAN traffic over VPN. Just some of it.

    What you can automate depends on your routers capabilities. Mine is a Mikrotik which does have fairly extensive support for custom scripts. However, detecting Geoblocking is probably going to involve parsing HTTP responses which is beyond the capabilities of almost all consumer grade routers. You would have to effectively do a MITM attack (aka deep packet inspection) in order to accomplish that on something other than the client device.

    TLDR: I manually change routes to a different VPN if needed but I very rarely run into Geoblocking issues.


  • I exclusively use my router as the VPN client for a few reasons. There are multiple services on my network that use the VPN. I’ve got static routes configured which effectively act as a kill switch and I can use QOS to prioritize traffic. It’s pretty much set it and forget it. You can use any VPN service as long at they offer a protocol your router supports. I use Proton via WireGuard and have for years.





  • Why not just use what you have until you can afford to and/or need to upgrade? SAS drives are more expensive because they typically offer higher performance and reliability. Hardware raid may be “old” but it’s still very common. The main risk with it is that if your raid card fails, you’ll have to replace it with the same model if you don’t want to rebuild your server from scratch.

    I’ve been running an old Dell PowerEdge for several years with no issues.




  • Self hosting is a great opportunity to learn about some popular technologies and even acquire a few sysadmin skills. Required knowledge of a self-hosted solutions tech stack is not gatekeeping any more than required knowledge of tools and building materials is gatekeeping when it comes to renovating your bathroom. In either scenario, if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s going to be a much more difficult job.

    reverse proxies

    That said, you should not be exposing any of your services to the public if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s a quick way to a bad time.