self host vs. paying for a host?

i can provide specs of my own pc if needed n whatnot - the electricity charge isnt an issue!

Pros
You host it on your machine

Cons
Electricity cost
Possible issue with your ISP, they might not allow you to port forward or you dont have a static ip
You probably can't get it secure enough without knowing what you are doing

Its not 24/7 you will need to eventually turn the machine off

can i ask why ill need to eventually turn the machine off?

what does the electricity cost usually look like - i have a router and a static ip for my pc

if this isnt a spare machine, you arent going to be able to run it a 24/7

just due to weight of hosting? or

Does your ISP provide the static ip?
There's a difference.

Electricity costs depends on your power supply, wattage usage, and cost per KW in your place

You can do it for sure, this is just the cons

if its purely for friends and not publically hosted its fine

i beliiieve so yes!

if its public, don't do self hosted

its just for friends, yes. itll be across countries/continents though - everyone will be whitelisted

You can always selfhost and decide to move it

^ that too

# We may have bad news for you :C

You may be under a CGNAT which is a method that ISP's use to conserve IPV4 IP's due to how limited they are now. What this means in plain terms is that your IP address is being shared with other people as your router goes to the ISP's router, by default this means port forwarding doesn't work.

We need to check if you are under a CGNAT and we got 2 options.

### Option 1: commands
Depending on your OS, run the following command:
- Windows: iex (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DominicTWHV/Is-It-CGNAT/refs/heads/main/windows.ps1")
- Linux: curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DominicTWHV/Is-It-CGNAT/refs/heads/main/linux.sh | bash
-# You should never run such things without reviewing and understanding the code

### Option 2: manually
Open your router's configuration interface. Somewhere, you'll see something like 'external' or 'public' IP.
If your external IP is in one of the following ranges, you're basically screwed as long as port forwards go:
- 10.0.0.0/8
- 172.16.0.0/20
- 192.168.0.0/16
- 100.64.0.0/10
- any IPv6 address/range - This shouldn't be a problem, but Minecraft's IPv6 support is still rather quirky. You're at your own, but we're happy if you share your experience.

## What do I do now?

You should ask your ISP for a public and IPv4 address (but this may cost you money).
NB: your internal IP should and most probably will be in one of the first three ranges, don't mix them up

You can use this to see if you are behind CGNAT or not

ill give it a try! every tutorial i google looks VERY different though and i dont know where to start

iex (Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DominicTWHV/Is-It-CGNAT/refs/heads/main/windows.ps1")

Look into port forwarding