From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: cashmere To: bbs@bbs.copland.systems Subject: decentralized/mesh/private networks Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2026 22:57:32 +0000 Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 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 acc= ess devices that live behind a NAT. There is also Tailscale, though I persona= lly don't trust them. At some point I was really interested in a way to access my devices without r= elying 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 al= low 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 decentralize= d network and has been around for years. The downside is, of course, the netw= ork 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 i= nstead 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 I= 2P 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 t= o 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 t= he initial setup once, but since then I have Yggdrasil on every one of my dev= ices (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 throu= gh a firewall manually. Nonetheless, it's pretty straightforward: you get a u= nique 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. --=20 https://bbs.copland.systems/forumpost/fe3b130a85