A noob question about VPSs and bandwidth

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨chriscrutch@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Another Lemmy thread led me to thinking about getting a cheap VPS for my homelab. I’m double-NATted by my ISP, so I can’t do traditional port forwarding. I’d like to get a cheap VPS, install Tailscale on it, and access my homelab from anywhere without having to have Tailscale on every device I use (at work where I can’t install it, for example).

I found a cheap VPS company and the plan I was looking at gives 1000 GB bandwidth per month. Some of the things I want to access are media servers (Navidrome and Jellyfin). So if I set up the VPS with nothing but a reverse proxy and Tailscale, will all my Jellyfin traffic go through the VPS and count as bandwidth used?

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WFloyd@lemmy.world [bot] ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

will all my Jellyfin traffic go through the VPS Yes and count as bandwidth used? Yes, twice (download from home to the server, and upload from the server to the client)

I do the same thing - I have a 3TB limit, but usually only use 300GB, sharing jellyfin to a dozen or so users.

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- miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Can vouch for Racknerd.
  
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- chriscrutch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Thank you for answering very clearly. That’s what I was expecting to hear. I was also looking at Nerdrack. It’s very interesting to hear your bandwidth numbers, I would only be serving to three users, so I’d likely be looking at much less than your 300 GB, which is very good to know!
  
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  - notoftenthat@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I am thinking about trying my hand at Tailscale, and have been tempted to click through to the Server Host offering on the LowEndBox $2 list.
    
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    Pricing: $21.88/year (75% off)
    
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    There’s a smaller one in the $1 list, also with allegedly unmetered bandwidth.
    
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- theit8514@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  This would depend on whether the limit is defined as ingress or egress or both. For example AWS has free ingress traffic from the internet but there is a cost for egress traffic to the internet.
  
  A better solution would be to find a unmetered service, which means that you have a fixed transfer speed (e.g. 500 Mbit) but have unlimited bandwidth. OVH offers this in their VPS products.
  
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JASN_DE@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

will all my Jellyfin traffic go through the VPS and count as bandwidth used?

Yes.

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irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
Yeah, video streaming is not a good thing to put on a limited bandwidth server either directly or as a VPN or proxy passing data.

Best bet would be if you can set up a reverse proxy on your router and have that accept all inbound requests and direct to the correct internal server and port.

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Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
FYI, Tailscale has the Funnel feature, so you can access your TS network without a client. Check it out.

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- chriscrutch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  Using it now for just jellyfin and it works well, but at this point it’s still in beta and there’s a maximum of three ports available.
  
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just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
How/why are you double NAT’d? Is it the ISP’s fault, or did you setup your own router behind their NAT’d handoff? If the latter, you can work around this.

Some other options to deal with the former:

Talk to them about running their handoff device in passthrough mode, or turn it on yourself (lookup the model and see instructions)

Get a static IP for your router on their network (not applicable to CGNAT)

Regarding Tailscale: you shouldn’t need a VPS for this. Even though you’re stuck with dNAT, the Tailscale client should be able to figure out a way to communicate with you wherever you are with DERP servers. Install on your phone, then a machine at home, and try it out.
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- chriscrutch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
  It’s the ISP. I’ve asked about it, they won’t let me do anything about it unless I sign up for a business account at triple the price.
  
  And no, I don’t need a VPS strictly for Tailscale, but i do want to access my tailnet from machines where I cannot install Tailscale (at work and on a roku tv in a remote location, specifically).
  
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  - biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    I don’t know where you work but don’t access your tailnet from a work device and ideally not their network.
    
    Speaking to roku, you could buy a cheap raspberri pi and usb network port. One port to the network the other to roku. The pi can have a tailscale advertised network to the roku, and the roku probably needs nothing since everything is upstream including private tailscale 100.x.y.z networks which will be captured by your device in the middle raspberri pi.
    
    I guess that’d cost like 40 ish dollars one time.
    
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  - just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago
    DynamicDNS will get you there without having to pay for VPS host traffic prices for ingress though.
    
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