Aleric, You might consider interpolating a pfSense gateway box between your ISP and your home network - it does pretty much all the things you asked for, except perhaps piHole. I've found my little box from netgate to be very reliable and worry-free.
It can also make living with dynamic DNS a lot easier, handling the task of updating your DNS entry when the IP changes. I'm not using that feature at the moment, but am considering giving up my block of static IPs since a) I only use one any more and b) it adds about 25% to my monthly bill. On October 24, 2025 3:01:08 AM PDT, Alaric Snell-Pym via Silklist <[email protected]> wrote: >On 29/07/2025 11:37, Udhay Shankar N via Silklist wrote: >> What are the ways in which silklisters keep an escape route from Big Tech? > >I am a nerd, so I run my own server. I have broadband from a "nerd ISP" that >assigns a static IP address and unfiltered Internet access, so I can accept >incoming connections to my own IP at home. This goes into my own equipment >(which is a fascinating story in itself; despairing of the unreliability of >the traditional "old desktop PC under the stairs" approach, I built a metal >chassis that holds a PC motherboard, a rack of drive bays, a power supply, and >a UPS (battery backup thing), and physically mounted it to the wall so it >can't get knocked about), which runs my own software. > >Much has been written about how this is a hard thing to do, requiring >specialist knowledge. And yes, it does, but that strikes me as fixable. For >much less effort than it takes to make a Linux distribution, one could build >on an existing Linux distribution to make a simple >plug-in-a-USB-stick-and-boot installation process to turn a spare PC into a >personal Internet server, asking only the bare minimum of questions. I'm >surprised that such a thing doesn't exist, or if it does exist, nobody has >heard of it. Please pleasantly surprise me if you know of one, so I can >publicise it :-) > >Despite the common stereotype, I find running email pretty easy. I set up SPF >when that became popular, but my mail system basically Just Works. Postfix >delivering mail to Unix accounts and IMAP-UW for people to pick it up; the one >fiddly thing is that my setup for sending email is only usable from within the >home network as I've not gotten round to setting up proper authenticated SMTP >on the submission port. I'm the only one who uses this system to send email >from laptops outside the home, and I use an SSH tunnel into the home network >to do so (ssh -D 1080 -p <not the default SSH port> <my external hostname>, >then tell Thunderbird to use localhost as a SOCKS proxy). Fixing that is on >the TODO list, and has been for years... Perhaps the fact that I relay >outgoing email via my ISP's mail server is why I don't have the deliverability >issues everyone mentions? I gather there's paid outgoing-SMTP servers people >whose ISPs don't run a mail relay can use? I'm not so worried about using a shared service for something like outgoing SMTP that stores no state, and the biggest pain of switching to another is updating my SPF records. Nonetheless, the efforts of running even direct-delivery SMTP should be done once, and that configuration rolled out as part of a plug-and-play mail server setup anyone can use rather than needing to do it themselves! Come on, tech industry, we know how to solve these problems! Why is it still hard? > >It's not too hard to get a domain name pointed at your IP; the hard part (and >probably why this isn't a mainstream thing) is the difficulty of getting a >static IP. The most accessible means for most people is probably one of the >many non-US-big-tech VPS providers out there, but ISPs who give you a static >IP aren't unheard of (so having the personal-server-distro thing have an >option to be a PPPoE router and also provide DNS/DHCP/NAT for a home network, >with integrated "PiHole"-style ad filtering and providing a VPN service for >when you're on the go, would be neat) > >My backups go to a tiny computer with a large USB disk attached, in a >different building. I keep my wife and eldest child informed as to where the >instructions to take over the whole shebang can be found, in a document that >also explains all the household finances, where the bodies are buried, etc. > >Anyway, on that I run email, Web, IRC, and stuff like version control system >repos. > >Also, I partake in the Fediverse - I don't run my own Mastodon server; I'd >like to but it's a faff, and the fact that one can migrate between servers >means I'm less *worried* about that. > >> >> Udhay >> > -- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
