allow self hosted servers

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Nelly
It would be useful to have software that we can put on a server, preferable linux/unix, and host our own servers on our own machines. There's nothing really wrong with the current existing servers provided, but I like having the server controlled by my own machine.
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Comments

44 comments

Date Votes
  • Rocks the Squirrel

    Bad idea cause then people would use it for other means then what its intended for and most times a support nightmare. Also many may abuse it to get IPs and more.

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  • devoir

    Ehmm.. This is what servers are for, you can create your own rules apart than the TOS..

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  • Slyke

    Bad idea cause then people would use it for other means then what its intended for and most times a support nightmare. Also many may abuse it to get IPs and more.

    Not sure what he's talking about, because Teamspeak, Mumble and many other self hosted software would have these problems too?

     

    But I think this is a great idea. Would be nice to be able to host it yourself, and just register it to the main discord server, so that users can just use your invite link which resolves to your dns/ip. Having a k8s setup would be really useful especially in lans, and where internet connectivity is at a premium. The server could even serve the webclient.

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  • Jerel Andomer

    I agree with this completely.

    Discord would be perfect for my workplace but we can't have someone else in possession of our data.

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  • Rocks the Squirrel

    @slyke with a quick search, you can see those services have there issues with self hosted servers. What is really needed that Discord does not already offer for free anyways.

    @gerald For workplace, wouldn’t you also want a secure place to transfer data anyways. Not sure your looking in the right place for that as self hosted would be worse.

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  • Slyke

    @Rocks the Squirrel If you do a quick search, you'll see that Discord also has issues with it being hosted officially. There's pros and cons to each method. The fact that I have more options allows me to better control my situation. It doesn't take away from being officially hosted, and adds better redundancy.

     

    I have hosted Teamspeak and Mumble servers and am a software engineer by profession so I know exactly what 'Issues' Teamspeak and mumble have. The issues you talk about are not relevant to this discussion, unless you have one specifically you can point out?

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  • Rocks the Squirrel

    Well good for you but not everyone is like that and most will put it on less secure to no security server or know how to do it. On top of that, they would bug Discord on there issues making it worse for Discord support to help with real issues with the service than already (as I see being a part of the bug hunters group)

    On top of that, people would hit the less secure servers to steal data.

    There is also the fact they already tagged the post as not planned.

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  • Slyke

    > Well good for you but not everyone is like that and most will put it on less secure to no security server or know how to do it.

    People can already do such things with and without Discord.

    > On top of that, they would bug Discord on there issues making it worse for Discord support to help with real issues with the service than already (as I see being a part of the bug hunters group)

    It can be community run, like most other self hosted options are (Teamspeak, HASSIO, PiHole etc).

    > On top of that, people would hit the less secure servers to steal data.

    Lets just ban anyone except vetted professionals from self hosting anything then, or just get rid of all self hosted software?

    > There is also the fact they already tagged the post as not planned.

    Lets change their mind.

     
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  • Kiwis

    Don't think they could do that since it exposes some of their code.

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  • bastet_of_orion
    There would need to be some extra features for security's sake (such as preemptively blocking malicious code from the hosting platform), but this sounds like a viable idea. I think people would need to have some verification process with Discord to make sure they aren't planning any unethical things with self-hosting.
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  • Mr Diamond

    @Daniel I mean if you could just host the VOIP and use the code that's on discords end maybe it could take of the load from a few servers. If the code is the issue.

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  • Kestouf

    Hello
    Sorry for my english, I go through google translate.
    I come from TeamSpeak3 which offers the possibility of hosting our own servers on linux.
    I switched to Discord because it's true that the "social" side is cool, and the ease of managing roles and user is better than on TS3. Unfortunately I find that the sound quality is worse than TS3 and there are often Ping increases and so robot voices with friends with whom we play.
    The advantage of hosting the discord server on our own dedicated server allows to have a machine that does not handle a full server discord and is not overloaded, to have an unsaturated bandwidth, and especially to have the server discord hosted not very far and not in another country. All these points would make that we would discord the TOP with a perfect ping.
    I think that with the ability to host your own server would get a lot of people from TS3 or Mumble to Discord.

    Thx

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  • Vesper

    I completely agree, the voice quality / latency is quite bad compared to a hosted Teamspeak. It would be great to have the possibility to host a Discord.

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  • BaSics

    yes we just switched back to TS3 cause we realy had problems understanding each other

    i do like Discord tho

    Hope they come with a fix or let others host their servers

    i dont mind paying for a Stable server

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  • Knagie

    @Slyke
    > > Well good for you but not everyone is like that and most will put it on less secure to no security server or know how to do it.

    > People can already do such things with and without Discord.

    No they can't with Discord, as it's not selfhosted, and afaik is there no way to steal/snoop someones IP/credentials through Discord itself, this would be possible in theory if it was selfhosted.

    > > On top of that, people would hit the less secure servers to steal data.

    > Lets just ban anyone except vetted professionals from self hosting anything then, or just get rid of all self hosted software?

    Although your message is sarcastic I do like to know what you think would happen if you login on a self hosted server with the credentials of Discord and they would get stolen because it's a malicious server. Discord would get blamed for this because someone with no knowledge of security set up a server and made a hole in the security. 
    If you say "Just let them create their own account per server" it would defeat the purpose of Discord, an environment to easily switch between servers without having to login with multiple accounts. 
    If you have to add someone 4 times because they are in 3 selfhosted servers and some official ones it would become a mess. Same with how the Discord client wouldn't show your activity when you're logged in to a private server. How many clients would there need to be so you can keep up with every server, as you can only login with 1 account per client for now.

    TS has accounts per server basically and doesn't have things like Nitro per user, only per server.
    How would you enforce the features of Nitro on selfhosted servers? Discord would get so many users complaining that their Nitro only works on official servers and not selfhosted ones.

    So it basically comes down to:
    "If they started with selfhosting from the beginning like TS3 did it would have been a different case"


    @Gerald
    > Discord would be perfect for my workplace but we can't have someone else in possession of our data.

    Then you are more looking at something like: Discord for Business and not specifically a selfhosted version of Discord, seeing with Discord for Business they would need to sign a contract or something for GDPR rules if you're from the EU, and even outside the EU if you have Europeans working at your company.

     

    I do like the idea of selfhosting software but Discord has more advantage of being hosted by them then getting all the trouble with moving from the current type of hosting to selfhosting. If they started with selfhosting from the beginning like TS3 it would have been a different case. And there is not so much downtime with them hosting it as there might be with selfhosting, as the status page shows there have been almost no outages, only short hickups mostly. So saying it's not dependable enough is not an argument I would think is valid in this discussion. As said before by Slyke, both have their pros and cons. The way I look at it with the amount of people using Discord already the advantages of Discord hosting it themselves are more/better than the advantages you would get from selfhosting.

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  • Kestouf

    Hello

    I would like to make a small clarification to my post above.
    It would be nice if Discord proposes to be able to host its own server on its dedicated server (linux for my part), but that it is not an obligation. For most people you offer servers it is fine, but you can have a choice.
    Thank you

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  • Josua

    @Knagie Minecraft has self hosted servers and has authentication, so maybe a modified server for self hosting could use some sort of session id instead of authenticating with username/password. Maybe all/most of the authentication could be done on discord servers but not on the self hosted ones. Minecraft manages to do it, so discord can too.

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  • Slyke
    • Edited

    Yeah, I stopped replying to him because it's obvious he's just trying to argue and doesn't really know what he's talking about. All his arguments are basically stating that it's going to cause people to get hacked, and be detrimental to Discord because it's no longer being officially hosted, which isn't even what we're saying. It's very easy to secure it using session tokens or JWTs that are signed by the official Discord server. There are many approaches.

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  • Knagie

    For some reason I was logged in under my other account. So here's the response I send but under the correct account.

    @Josua
    Good point I didn't think about sessions before. That would indeed make self hosting possible.
    The problem with the client could still become a problem as people will probably expect the same performance as official Discord servers and might cause confusion. But it wouldn't be a real problem I think as longs as it's made clear what is self hosted and what is hosted officially by Discord.
    @Slyke
    >Yeah, I stopped replying to him because it's obvious he's just trying to argue and doesn't really know what he's talking about.
    If you're talking about me, you never replied to me before as I only posted one message in this thread so stop making it sound like I'm only posting to argue. I just put my in my toughts on the subject as that's what this platform is for.
    Also yes I know a bit about servers and authentication, and I'm aware I'm far from all knowing on the subject.
    So if you have something to add, like at the end of your message, please just add it and don't reply with unnecessary comment's about people.

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  • possibleluck

    I would agree on this topic very heavy not because "server controlled by my own machine" but due to poor discord server hostings some times brings low service connection to voice channels. Experience break connections and interrupts in middle of conversations is annoying to switch servers and "HOPE AND PRAY" it will be fine.

    This is ofc coming from me who has 1gbps internet speed.

    I know by hosting a server my self the connection is always the best. Never down. Experience.

    If discord is not giving more reasons or even upgrade nitro members to VIP VOICE SERVERS. Self hosting should be an option to keep you and discord happy. Or allow discord nitro members access to upgrade the severs to VOIP. just like verified servers.

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  • PennY_Lane

    I would prefer to self host as I could then control the performance of my environment. My team is experienced professionals highly skilled in massively large communications environments. 

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  • Demon
    • Edited

    Hey,

     

    I would like to voice my support for the ability to self-host the voice part of Discord as a self-funded paid option of having a customised location for all of your server's voice users, which of course would be limited by the hardware of the hosting machine.

     

    This solution could be aimed more at the power user/IT part of the server owners, who would like a very reliable environment that is uninfluenced by the global/central situations or general server load.

     

    For reference, VoIP programs such as TeamSpeak, Ventrilo and Mumble are mainly used for voice purposes, however all of them allow the servers to be self-hosted and thus independent from millions of users that all could put potential server load at crucial moments to some of the more 'funded' communities.

     

    This is why I believe that this should be a completely optional, free option for users to be able to deploy a sort of "Discord voice API kit" on a machine capable of hosting, and then attaching it to an existing Discord server (by providing server ID and linking it), and thus in the result making the main part of Discord including its chat being centralised/global like it is now, and the voice chat as being locally hosted anywhere the owner wants it to be.

     

    P.S. The machine to host the "Discord voice server part" would still need to be obtained by the server owner himself/herself just like with the other VoIP programs on the market, and as such this is an expense on their part (whether by renting a VPS/physical server, or hosting a machine by themselves).

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  • Overdrive

    Updoot for sure. The company I work for predominantly uses IRC for sensitive communication because we can self host. Its super dated, but because of security requirements at the company, it is still the only thing we can use unrestricted. We currently use Slack for inter-team communications, but because they do not offer self hosted options, we're very much limited in the type of information we can send to each-other - again, due to data security requirements. Being able to self host would be the optimal answer to allow enterprise level deployment.

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  • Vin

    AGREED. I have voice connection issues DAILY. Would love to see a dedicated server option 

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  • Heck

    Would probably have better uptime than normal servers. Most of the time when someone's hosting their own server it's something that would break Discord tos, but it wouldn't be taking place on discord servers so they wouldn't be able to delete the server.

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  • Rene

    Is it possible to solve everything programming-wise, for example with a license system? I have the feeling that discord would never want that his user wants to host this server with him. and that's why I do not like discord because I'm too limited and do not get the opportunity to do something myself. as long as discord does not change I stay with teamspeak

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  • OleksiiBondarenkoAlexMazaltovAB๛

    Could we use discord server as base to provide hosting for drupal core with docker?

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  • Josua

    Imagine this for server owners: having a self hosted server would open doors for local, open source discord bots, that may even have better interfacing with the server itself. You could have internal bots (maybe not even bots, maybe modifications or scripts) that can filter messages before the message is sent. Say for example: someone does a mass ping, because @everyone and @here is disabled, and the mass ping can be filtered out and the user can be warned BEFORE those people are pinged (instead of after everyone is pinged, then the message gets deleted by a bot). The server experience could be much smoother and better for everyone (including discord, because they would be hosting less discord servers).

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  • Cooli McTryhard

    As someone who works in the DoD, Discord could open up a crazy new sector of business for themselves if they did this. Slack still doesn't offer self-hosting and the best alternative that my group can use right now (Mattermost) is definitely not as feature-rich as Discord.

    I'm aware that Discord was made with gamers in mind but Discord is an excellent product and most DoD developers I've met are gamers anyway... ;)

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  • TekspaR

    Updoot again on Mattermost. The company I work for is looking at that for our inter-team communication for our regulated market teams. Things where data can't leave the country, including communications. All of the concerns mentioned are easily mitigated.

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