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LnkStart

What LnkStart does

Publish what runs at home, at your office or on your laptop through your own server, without opening ports on the router.

WEBSITES AND APIS
  • An HTTPS address per serviceapp.yourdomain.com comes from the name you give it; your server requests and renews the certificate.
  • Your main domain, not just subdomainsyourdomain.com serves your front end and api.yourdomain.com your API, two ports on the same machine.
  • Several apps, in one fileEight ports across three apps fit in services.toml, grouped and editable by hand; a whole app goes up or down at once.
  • WebSockets and long responsesThey pass through untouched, as do downloads and live events.
  • Apps on another machine of your networkA NAS or a camera on 192.168.x.x is published from the machine that does run the agent.
BEYOND HTTP
  • TCP: SSH, RDP, databases, MQTTPrivate, opening a port only on the machine connecting, or public with an IP allowlist.
  • UDP: VoIP, games, WireGuard, DNSSame model as TCP, with a response budget that stops your server being used to amplify attacks.
WHEN SOMETHING BREAKS
  • Never a server errorIf your machine or your app does not answer, the visitor sees “back shortly”, or the address you choose.
  • Failover between machinesThe same app on two machines: if the serving one drops, the other takes over unnoticed.
  • Load sharingSeveral machines serving at once, each visit going to the one with least work in flight.
CONNECTION AND SECURITY
  • QUIC, with WebSocket as backupFaster with packet loss and survives network changes; if the network blocks UDP, it switches by itself.
  • One credential per machineEach machine has its own, with the names it may publish, and it is revoked without touching the others.
  • Password or token per serviceFor what should not be public, without touching your app: neither the password nor the token reach it.
Requirements and limits
  • You need a server of your own: a VPS with a public IP.
  • You need a domain: it does not work with only an IP.
  • Server on Linux; agent on Linux (Raspberry Pi and Docker too) and macOS.
  • It is not a full private network like Tailscale: it gives access to specific services, not to the whole machine.

Each of these, with its commands, is in the Guide.