decentralized/mesh/private networks

[cashmere <bbs@bbs.copland.systems>]

What type of "alternative" networks do you use and why?

I know some of us here use NetBird to create their own private network to access devices that live behind a NAT. There is also Tailscale, though I personally don't trust them.

At some point I was really interested in a way to access my devices without relying on my VPS or a third-party service such as Tailscale.

Here is a brief list of what I've found so far over the years. All of them allow you to access devices behind a NAT.

# [Tor Project](https://www.torproject.org/)

Not many people know that you can use the Tor network to access a device you couldn't normally reach because it has a static IP. It's decentralized, so it's very hard to have a single point of failure. It's the biggest decentralized network and has been around for years. The downside is, of course, the network speed.

# [I2P](https://i2p.net/en/)

It's somewhat similar to Tor in its decentralized aspect, though it has many improvements such as faster connections. The network itself is based on P2P instead of nodes, so as you connect to I2P you also contribute a small portion back, and it's much more personal than Tor. I never tried to set up my own I2P instance, but I will probably take a closer look.

# [Yggdrasil](https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/)

This has been by far my favorite decentralized network. Its sole purpose is to create a decentralized mesh network. They leave you the choice of what you do on top of the network.

It's very straightforward to get things up and running. I had to figure out the initial setup once, but since then I have Yggdrasil on every one of my devices (even my Android phone), so whenever I want to access my devices without thinking too much about it, it's just ready to go.

Again, the "downside" is that you have to limit access to your services through a firewall manually. Nonetheless, it's pretty straightforward: you get a unique IPv6 address which you have to set on a whitelist. It took me a little time to figure it out, but then it made sense. Sadly, the upstream docs aren't that great at explaining it.

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