this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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On occasion I find myself needing to send a file at least a few gigabytes in size to a friend across our slow ISPs but haven't found a satisfying solution. I usually end up creating a private torrent with the announce address of my own IP. Even though it's slow - it basically never reaches my max upload speed for some reason, it is at least resilient if there are ever any network glitches.

Does anyone else face this same challenge?

EDIT: Thank you for the awesome suggestions! I have some homework to do on these

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[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

The fact that Syncthing seems to solve CGNAT on its own has me wondering why there are not more solutions for the server/home side.

Why does Wireguard or any other VPN not work like Tailscale or Zerotier?

Why don't torrent clients can't work with IPv6 to seed more?

Why doesn't Plex adopt a similar mechanic like Syncthing to expose the media over the Internet instead of being a prisoner of CGNAT?

I know I am just throwing different options with my personal frustrations lol, but I hope you get what I am trying to mean, Plex, torrent and home VPN users shouldn't become masters at networking, especially when the documentation for the tools IS NOT ENOUGH.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 10 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Why does Wireguard or any other VPN not work like Tailscale or Zerotier?

tailscale and zerotier are wireguard, but with a public server that helps with NAT. Syncthing uses a public server for that too.

wireguard was specifically made to be as simple and minimalistic as possible.

Why don't torrent clients can't work with IPv6 to seed more?

is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue

Why doesn't Plex adopt a similar mechanic like Syncthing to expose the media over the Internet instead of being a prisoner of CGNAT?

maybe they just don't see working on it profitable enough

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

tailscale and zerotier are wireguard, but with a public server that helps with NAT. Syncthing uses a public server for that too.

wireguard was specifically made to be as simple and minimalistic as possible.

Zerotier wasn't always Tailscale was it?

is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue

You need to be connectable to download from all the peers, likewise non connectable users can't download from you, and how do you become connectable? By opening your ports, something that might seem archaic from somebody who has totally embraced IPv6.

maybe they just don't see working on it profitable enough

Yeah maybe.

Just to clarify, I have several workarounds for the 3 issues that have involved spending more money or not to get rid of CGNAT.

  • For the 1st one... Well I already mentioned it, I am a ZT and Tailscale user, I did try Wireguard from a VPS once though, but I didn't like that I was entirely dependant of my upload speed, maybe I had my Iptables wrongly configured but I usually got faster speeds just using ZT or Tailscale (I didn't need to relay in the US VPS server).

  • For Torrenting... I actually haven't found a solution to use IPv6... I did use a container client to use my VPS at that time though, it being Digital Ocean and thus getting a DMCA letter for downloading TWD me being a LATAM user was... A kinda funny experience, with that said I stopped that project immediately, it was fun to give back to the community with my 24/7 NAS always seeding though.

  • For the last point... Well, I do use ZT and Tailscale to access the server myself, but when I want to expose it, I usually do it with a reverse proxy pointing out to my IPv6 address, and more recently using a Tailscale funnel, I haven't tried it thoroughly, but at least it seems to connect without using Plex's relays.

As you can see, one needs to be well prepared with workarounds to deal with CGNAT.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Zerotier wasn't always Tailscale was it?

it is not tailscale. but also it seems I was wrong and its not wireguard either

You need to be connectable to download from all the peers, likewise non connectable users can't download from you, and how do you become connectable? By opening your ports, something that might seem archaic from somebody who has totally embraced IPv6.

I know what opening ports is, I only have v4. But I thought you have difficulties with bittorrent over v6. or is it that you still need to open ports for v6, in the firewall or something?

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 1 points 3 hours ago

it is not tailscale. but also it seems I was wrong and its not wireguard either

Yeah, I totally meant Wireguard there, my bad.

I know what opening ports is, I only have v4. But I thought you have difficulties with bittorrent over v6. or is it that you still need to open ports for v6, in the firewall or something?

I don't have difficulties to download, I have difficulties to seed because I am CGNATED and it seems Qbittorrent or any Torrent client really can't use IPv6 to be more connectable thus seed more.

I want to seed more without having to pay for it or do convoluted workarounds.

[–] Andres4NY@social.ridetrans.it 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

@WhyJiffie @kratoz29

> is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue

Yes, that is a problem. We're still in a world where you need to manually enable port forwarding in order to get better seeding for bittorrent clients, and if you have CGNAT you're SOL (short of using a VPN or something to bounce through an external host).

It's likely because torrent software is older (& in crappier languages), and came about before CGNAT was a thing.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 hours ago

> is there such a problem? honest question. But I think that might be a different issue

Yes, that is a problem. We're still in a world where you need to manually enable port forwarding in order to get better seeding for bittorrent clients, and if you have CGNAT you're SOL (short of using a VPN or something to bounce through an external host).

I don't understand, sorry. they were saying that something doesn't work as expected IPv6. but CGNAT is not used for IPv6, is it? and you don't really forward ports either, maybe you allow them through in the routercs firewall but notnsure because I don't have v6

We're still in a world where you need to manually enable port forwarding

well, you don't need to, often you can also enable the upnp function in the router so that any software can open all the ports it wants, which is a terrible idea security-wise