Static IP Address

Off the Wall
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For my technical friends out there. I’m looking for a cost-effective and portable solution to be able to generate a static IP address for my self when I’m at home and traveling. Does anyone have some good ideas on how to manage this?

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Depending on what you want to do, there may be an alternative.

Tailscale is an astoundingly good, free-for-most-users VPN solution, available on nearly every device I’ve used. I can see devices behind mobile phone NATs, as well as servers I have online.

If your use case requires that the machines behind that IP address be shared, you can invite users to your Tailscale network, or (I believe) expose single devices to internet-facing addresses.

2 Likes
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I echo @DaveM, @satikusala. From what you describe, may not need a static IP, but a way to seamlessly connect your local computers to one another while you are away from the local network. Tailscale fits that exactly.

You connect each machine to your Tailscale account and then you get a new Tailscale-specific IP. So my machine that has 192.168.50.12 on a local network, I can access using Tailscale address of 100.81.200.24.

It can use multiple credential/auth servers, including Apple keychain. Each node would be represented by hash@privaterelay.appleid.com and Apple is managing the security. Basic is free, and they have other personal and business plans for income, roughly $5-6/mo.

I use this for example, to access a large machine learning workstation running dual GPUs from a tiny 10" Chuwi minibook laptop. It’s brilliant.

2 Likes
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Another happy user of Tailscale. If I remember setting mine up, you can assign machines an IP address (or, more accurately, make the IP address that is assigned persistent). I have a Raspberry Pi serving a camera that watches my 3D printer as it works.

You do need to be able to run software on the machine. They have apps for phones and tablets, and for Windows, Mac and Linux. However, if it is a corporate-controlled machine, you might not have the permissions to run the software without IT assistance.

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Thanks. All. As cool as Tailscale looks, I don’t think it will work for me, at at least not directly. I need a system where I can create a dedicated IP to share Google MAPs API to restrict the API to a dedicated IP. The problem is I don’t have a dedicated IP through my ISP. It looks like I need to,

  1. Setup up a Virtual Private Server with Tailscale
  2. Setup Tailscale Exit Node and configure my laptop to use it
  3. Whitelist the VPS with Google

If I’m going to bo the VPS route, this might be the opportunity to set up a personal markdown blog. :slight_smile:

For the VPS, does anyone have any opinions on: AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr?

For the Markdown blog, has anyone used Ghost, Hugo, or Jekyll?

What web server should I put on the VPS? Caddy, Nginx, or Apache?

I guess another option would be to set up a MacMini or a Raspberry Pi server, both of which come with different learning curve. :wink:

This may take a bit of figuring out, but eventually I will. :slight_smile: Thanks all.

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Hold it. So you’re not going to use Tinberbox to publish your blog? :exploding_head:

In all seriousness, I’ve had good luck with Ghost running on Linode. But knowing what I know now about TBX, I would probably go that route as Ghost’s templating engine is not nearly as flexible.

1 Like
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Oh, I most certainly will. Use Tinderbox to write and publish it. I just need to host it somewhere. :slight_smile: