Category: Networking

Creating A Steam Cache In 15 Minutes

At home I have a custom-built NAS that I use for all of my storage needs. I use it all the time to store files like game client downloads and backups of my games on Steam. It just makes it easier to restore after an install or when a friend needs to copy a game over. Recently however I was referred to LANcache.

EDIT 3/2/2017

As pointed out by some commenters, the previous nginx config was incorrect and missing some server names. This post has been updated to reflect those changes.

I had to redo my caching server recently and I can 100% confirm that this guide will work correctly. Nothing like a clean install!

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Change your external IP

I ran into a problem today; I was trying to connect to an external server via SSH, but the server kept dropping me. I narrowed it down to the idea of the server blocking my external IP address. I tried everything from SSH proxies to SSH web clients. The web client consoleFISH worked out sorta well, but it was slow and it didn’t give me the feel of Terminal’s “Homebrew” view.

Then I thought, “Wait a minute, what if I just changed my IP address?” knowing that I had a dynamic IP with my ISP. Turns out that it was the easiest solution, though it may not work for everybody. I read up on the subject and found that most cable ISP’s give you an IP address based on the MAC address of your router. It makes sense too if you think about it. Whenever I swapped out my router I noticed that we got a different IP address, and because the MAC address was really the only thing that changed (from a connection standpoint) it just clicked.

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