Gaining an external IP address...

[mrkvchm]

I want to host a server at home that I can access on the go. However, my ISP has me under an extra later of NAT, so I don't have an externally addressable IP address. Therefore, my goal is to gain one.

 

My best idea so far is to use a free-tier Google Cloud Platform Compute instance, which has an external IP address, to mediate the traffic.

 

So far, I've installed OpenVPN on my cloud server. I can connect to it, but it doesn't seem to pass any network traffic through. I can't access the internet when I'm connected.

 

My end goal is to have my home server addressable with the IP address of my VPN server. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

[kirashi]

6 minutes ago, mrkvchm said:

I want to host a server at home that I can access on the go. However, my ISP has me under an extra later of NAT, so I don't have an externally addressable IP address. Therefore, my goal is to gain one.

My best idea so far is to use a free-tier Google Cloud Platform Compute instance, which has an external IP address, to mediate the traffic.

So far, I've installed OpenVPN on my cloud server. I can connect to it, but it doesn't seem to pass any network traffic through. I can't access the internet when I'm connected.

My end goal is to have my home server addressable with the IP address of my VPN server. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

Sounds to me like you want to use a cloud hosting platform as a reverse proxy to tunnel into a server running inside your carrier-grade NAT internet connection, both of which things I know little about because 1) reverse proxying is not something I've needed in my world of webdev / sysadmin work, assuming it's even possible when you're behind a carrier-grade NAT connection and 2) an ISP providing a connection with carrier-grade NAT should be replaced with literally any other ISP that does not utilize carrier-grade NAT - hopefully you have another ISP you can go with.

 

Also, keep in mind that unless you have a business plan from your ISP that explicitly states you're allowed to run servers from the connection, I would highly advise not doing this for anything beyond personal/testing purposes, as your ISP can terminate your connection for this.

[mrkvchm]

31 minutes ago, kirashi said:

hopefully you have another ISP you can go with.

Nope. I live in a very rural area with not a lot going for me.

31 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Also, keep in mind that unless you have a business plan from your ISP that explicitly states you're allowed to run servers from the connection, I would highly advise not doing this for anything beyond personal/testing purposes, as your ISP can terminate your connection for this.

Yes, I realize this. I intend only personal/experimental usage. I just want to see if I can get it to work.