Slightly out there idea (Don't hurt me)

AnthonySmith

Hi Folks,

Perhaps this idea is just stupid and feel free to tell me it is but it has been rattling around in my head for a while and thought what better place to bring it up....

We already see ipv6 only providers creeping up, how about no IP servers?

Yep I know that sounds insane and I don't really mean no IP at all what I mean is an internal only IP e.g. 10.0.0.90 and a range of ports e.g. 100 high level ports.

The recommended use / target audience would be people that already buy a VPS to use purely for development, (Open)VPN and or any other services that the user can define their own ports with.

Obviously the not taking up of the required/diminishing IPv4 space used would help bring these servers down in price at no loss to hosts and the saving can be passed on to the customer, it would also be easy enough to give out IP6 on this sort of service too.

Have I lost my mind, is this a terrible idea, as an end user would you find a use for such a service?

Interested to hear any thoughts on this.

Mon5t3r

i did try that a year ago. i even give it for free. :P but no one interested. except you.. hehehe

Zetta

It sounds less of a VPS and more of a shell account or something.
How much are IPv6 addresses anyway? A dollar per thousand?

rds100

Actually if someone wants to pay a cent per million ipv6 addresses, i have trillions for sale ;-)

maxexcloo

I'd use one :-)

yomero

BuildYourVPS did something like that IIRC. But yes, I think they can have some usage. Some of my boxes are idling and just being used for VPN and so.

AnthonySmith

Yeah just to clarify I think native IP6 would definitely be part of it, but with this (perhaps not so insane it seems) idea you would have IP4 connectivity too, just not a dedicated external IP.

Could also work as backup servers or teamspeak/vent etc, I could be wrong but I bet there are a massive amount of servers running that really don't need an external IP4.

I understand the comment on it being like a jailed environment but this would actually be a real VPS just without a dedicated IP4

breton

Nice idea. 1€ saved is never bad.

as an end user would you find a use for such a service?

Yep. Count me in as a potential user and tester.

But there can be some issues. For example, if you give 100 ports, ssh port is one of them, which makes my server a bit less secure (not much though, keys rock). With ip4 that port is one of 2^16.
But a bit more secure for other, "public" services - bots will not know about them.
Another one - no control panels and absolutely unsuitable for unexperienced users.

AnthonySmith

Thanks Breton,

Well with a standard VPS when you first sign up your server will be responding on port 22 out of the box anyway so in that case unless I don't understand your point its no different.

Agreed its not ideal for inexperienced users.

Not sure what you mean by control panels, users would still have access to their VPS via SolusVM?

Kuro

IIRC a provider has already done this once before, and also included NGINX reverse proxying so clients could host websites on their VPS too.

EDIT: http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/buildyourvps-openvz-vps-from-2/

AnthonySmith

also included NGINX reverse proxying so clients could host websites on their VPS too

Thats a great idea.

breton

@AnthonySmith said:

Not sure what you mean by control panels, users would still have access to their VPS via SolusVM?

CPanel for example. Or I am wrong and they can be used?

@AnthonySmith said: when you first sign up your server will be responding on port 22 out of the box

Err, nevermind, just ran some test, that's really not an issue.

Asim

Im in for one

AuroraZ

Am I correct in assuming that if my isp does not have IPv6 support then I would not be able to ssh into my box?

This may not be an issue for some but for people like me it will be. The people in my part of this state have just received high speed internet. So them rolling out IPv6 is not likely at this point.

I am not saying this is a bad idea just that it may not be as readily available as everyone thinks for everyone.

breton

@AuroraZ said: Am I correct in assuming that if my isp does not have IPv6 support then I would not be able to ssh into my box?

Nope, you will be able to login, but not with standart 22 port.

@AuroraZ said: This may not be an issue for some but for people like me it will be. The people in my part of this state have just received high speed internet. So them rolling out IPv6 is not likely at this point.

You will be able access all of your services, but by non-standart ports. Not 80 for public sites, not 21 for ftp etc.

NickM

It would definitely be nice to have a VPS with no IPv4 address. It would be good for uses like mine - I have a frontend server running nginx, and a backend running php-fpm and mysql. The frontend is the only computer that ever has to communicate with the backend, and they're both from the same company, in the same DC. I could ditch the public IPv4 address with no problem, and help the IPv4 exhaustion problem while I'm at it.

Go59954

It does exist in networking! Someone thought of exactly your solution and even implemented it. It has been used between the internet and an internal network of any size, for saving actual IPv4 addresses (a kind of router, but routes data externally to 1 or more real IPv4 addresses, and internally to as many clients through local-only or port-based IP addresses). Alas I can't seem to recall what it's named!

Kuro

@Go59954 NAT?

Network Address Translation for those of you who might not know ;P

AuroraZ

@breton said: Nope, you will be able to login, but not with standard 22 port.

You will be able access all of your services, but by non-standard ports. Not 80 for public sites, not 21 for ftp etc.

Then this would be no issue for me as I change them anyways. All a part of the basic security I do on every server. Except the port 80 for sites of course. I might take one as well depending on price of course.

I guess a lot of things boil down to how much cash I have left after paying my bills lol.

NickM

@breton said: Nope, you will be able to login, but not with standart 22 port.

To expand on this a bit... the VPSes would all be behind a NAT device, with a range of ports forwarded to your VPS. Customer A would use x.x.x.x:10000 - x.x.x.x:10100, for example, so you could set up your sshd to use port 10122 (or just forward x.x.x.x:10122 to your internal 10.x.x.x:22, eliminating the need to modify your VPS's config)

Go59954

@Kuro said: @Go59954 NAT?

Network Address Translation for those of you who might not know ;P

Yes, exactly, thanks for clarifying that..

Mon5t3r

Just want make this more easier. excerpt from my old script.

NAT

EXTERNIP="xx.xx.xx.xx" ## Public IP (Hardware Node only)
LOCALNET="172.16.16.0/25" ## (Private IP block)
HOST="172.16.16.1 ## Private IP (Hardware Node)

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -d ! ${LOCALNET} -j SNAT --to ${EXTERNIP}
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING --dst ${EXTERNIP} -p tcp --dport 22 -j DNAT --to-destination ${HOST}
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING --dst ${EXTERNIP} -p tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination ${HOST}

iptables --table nat --append POSTROUTING --out-interface eth0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables --append FORWARD --in-interface eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 8101 -j DNAT --to-destination 172.16.16.101:80
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 22101 -j DNAT --to-destination 172.16.16.101:22

ssh

ssh -p 22101 [email protected]
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:8101

nginx

server {
    listen          80;
    server_name     your.domain.name;
    location / {
        proxy_pass  http://172.16.16.101/;
    }
}

AnthonySmith

Hmm some good feedback then, might set something up in the new year.

Not so sure about cPanel, would never be aimed at that but in theory it would be possible to use something like ISP Config 3 and just change all the ports.

Mon5t3r

@AnthonySmith said: ISP Config 3

yeah, they have "vserver" function starting from 3.0.4.1. so you can run VPS and hosting control panel at the same time (maybe). :P