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Show HN: Check Your Network's Ability to Host a VPN Server

4 points| idoescompooters | 1 year ago |icanhazvpn.com

Got bored today so I created this little companion site for my main VPN setup blog page to help people who are not tech-savvy quickly know whether their network can support hosting a VPN server (ex. WireGuard).

It basically checks if it's public/private and if it's from a cellular network. Also tries to distinguish between Verizon 5G Home or AT&T Fiber which are not the same as cellular and should still work for hosting a VPN.

7 comments

order

KomoD|1 year ago

So it doesn't check if you can actually host it (because it can't check, there is no other way than checking on your actual network)

Literally all it does:

if org belonging to ip contains wireless, mobile, cellular, verizon, at&t, t-mobile, sprint: IP is cellular (really bad way to determine if an IP is cellular or not by the way)

if IP belongs to asns 701, 6167, 22394, 21928, 23402: IP is cellular

if IP belongs to asns 7018, 20001: IP is not cellular

if none of above if statements match: IP is not cellular

if IP is cellular: no you can't

if IP isn't cellular: yes you can

That's it, that's the entire site.

And saying "Public-looking IP" doesn't make sense, you'll never get anything other than a public IP from icanhazip (or any other ip fetching service). Also having a cellular IP doesn't automatically mean you are unable to receive inbound traffic, some providers sell "mobile broadband" that allow you to open ports, etc.

toomuchtodo|1 year ago

This is clever and cool, thank you for building and sharing it. Any chance it supports JSON for machine detection? Similar to jsonip.com

idoescompooters|1 year ago

Not at the moment. I understand that is the beauty of icanhazip.com, but I didn't realize my version would be desirable to have this "feature". https://ifconfig.co/json exists though!