Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#11

Post by nighthawk454 » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

tadasv wrote: post #4

gtoubassi wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really clever and minimal approach to getting (for my use case at least) the moral equivalent of a cloudflare tunnel without actually depending on CF. Super cool.

It is minimal and somewhat neat. It claims to be P2P, but it still needs to bootstrap the connection via central server. I think that always might be a limitation of P2P. I had a similar idea but for wireguard only, where you would allow people to join a vpn through a "shared" jumpbox. To get started with wg is very simple, the problem is the same you need public IP address to scaffold everything. Out of the two opti…

> it still needs to bootstrap the connection via central server. I think that always might be a limitation of P2P

I think Iroh has a way of doing it using either DNS or BitTorrent DHT. Not perfect but fairly decentralized

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#12

Post by narragansett » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 7:41 PM UTC

nighthawk454 wrote: post #11

tadasv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is minimal and somewhat neat. It claims to be P2P, but it still needs to bootstrap the connection via central server. I think that always might be a limitation of P2P. I had a similar idea but for wireguard only, where you would allow people to join a vpn through a "shared" jumpbox. To get started with wg is very simple, the problem is the same you need public IP address to scaffold everything. Out of the two opti…

> it still needs to bootstrap the connection via central server. I think that always might be a limitation of P2P I think Iroh has a way of doing it using either DNS or BitTorrent DHT. Not perfect but fairly decentralized

Iroh's discovery is genuinely neat, and node-IDs-as-public-keys is similar to bitbang.

A browser can't join a DHT though because of no UDP sockets, so the connecting side would need a native client, which is the thing bitbang avoids. And DHT lets you locate the peer, but you still need somewhere to trade SDP and ICE candidates, so the rendezvous stays either way I think.

What I can do is keep the broker small enough that self-hosting is realistic, which is where it is now -- no accounts, no registry, nothing that grants access, only a simple broker.

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#13

Post by apitman » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 7:53 PM UTC

Would love to have this on https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling as soon as it hits 100 stars.

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#14

Post by peter_d_sherman » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 8:08 PM UTC

So I read a whole bunch of text trying to figure out what this thing is...

Then I see the following line in the 'How it compares' section:

"Self-hostable server (open source)": ngrok->No, Cloudflare Tunnel->No, Tailscale->No, Bitbang->Yes

...and I'm like, "It's Open Source Tailscale!"

And now I "get it"! (you know, epiphany, profound enlightenment and all that!) :-)

(Well, it's an open source alternative to Tailscale, to be more precise, and an excellent one at that!)

Great work, Rich LeGrand!

(Another step forward for open source!)

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#15

Post by narragansett » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

apitman wrote: post #13

Would love to have this on https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling as soon as it hits 100 stars.

here's hoping! :)

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#16

Post by ranger_danger » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC

narragansett wrote: post #10

owaiswiz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case a direct p2p connection is not possible and it goes through the relay, is that for all traffic (even if encrypted )? And who bears the cost for that (or does it have some FUP) (bandwidth cant be free/unlimited?)

Yes -- if direct P2P fails, everything rides the TURN relay that gets inserted automatically -- it's DTLS end-to-end so the relay only sees ciphertext, never plaintext or the access code. On cost: I pay for it on bitba.ng and it's capped right now at 10 minutes per connection (mostly to prevent people from connecting and walking away). But you're not stuck with mine -- the signaling server is open source, so you can…

> There are TURN providers that have reasonably generous free tiers.

Could you provide a list of ones you know? Last I looked I wasn't able to find anything fast or reliable.

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#17

Post by narragansett » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 8:35 PM UTC

peter_d_sherman wrote: post #14

So I read a whole bunch of text trying to figure out what this thing is... Then I see the following line in the 'How it compares' section: "Self-hostable server (open source)": ngrok->No, Cloudflare Tunnel->No, Tailscale->No, Bitbang->Yes ...and I'm like, "It's Open Source Tailscale! " And now I "get it"! (you know, epiphany, profound enlightenment and all that!) :-) (Well, it's an open source alternative to Tailscal…

Remote access lacks a certain amount of sex appeal -- thanks for reading the through the techno-babble and not giving up :)

And yes -- open source and self-hostable is a big part it. The other half is that the connecting side can be a browser, so there's no client to install on whatever you happen to be sitting at. Tailscale is a network you join, this is closer to a link you hand someone.

Also taking "read a whole bunch of text first" as a hint. That comparison probably belongs higher up the README.

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#18

Post by fmarasho » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 9:10 PM UTC

Looks like https://www.iroh.computer, can you explain how this approach is similar/different?

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#19

Post by tyingq » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

ranger_danger wrote: post #16

narragansett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes -- if direct P2P fails, everything rides the TURN relay that gets inserted automatically -- it's DTLS end-to-end so the relay only sees ciphertext, never plaintext or the access code. On cost: I pay for it on bitba.ng and it's capped right now at 10 minutes per connection (mostly to prevent people from connecting and walking away). But you're not stuck with mine -- the signaling server is open source, so you can…

> There are TURN providers that have reasonably generous free tiers. Could you provide a list of ones you know? Last I looked I wasn't able to find anything fast or reliable.

Cloudflare's is $0.05 per GB if your traffic exceeds the 1,000 GB free threshold.

Re: Show HN: BitBang – Reach machines behind NAT from a browser, no account

#20

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 31, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

ranger_danger wrote: post #16

narragansett wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes -- if direct P2P fails, everything rides the TURN relay that gets inserted automatically -- it's DTLS end-to-end so the relay only sees ciphertext, never plaintext or the access code. On cost: I pay for it on bitba.ng and it's capped right now at 10 minutes per connection (mostly to prevent people from connecting and walking away). But you're not stuck with mine -- the signaling server is open source, so you can…

> There are TURN providers that have reasonably generous free tiers. Could you provide a list of ones you know? Last I looked I wasn't able to find anything fast or reliable.

[deleted]