The nightmare of homelabbing in Greece
18-05-2025
Setting up a homelab in Greece is a nightmare. "Why?" you may ask. I'll tell you.
Internet Service Provider
It's well known that Greece has bad internet. But what is worse than the internet speeds is the customer service. Port forwarding almost NEVER works, and you have to call a hotline and wait 40 minutes just to ask them to open the ports for you. And if that wasn't enough, half the time even when they DO open the ports, they still won't work! At the time of writing this blog post, XMPP, SMTP and IMAP are all opened but half don't work!
Power Costs
Power costs have skyrocketed like hell recently so I had to switch my homelab to a small HP Compaq 8300 Elite. That's not really a big issue, the device doesn't consume much power but I still thought I should mention it.
Conclusion
Fuck Cosmote!!! (Telekom/T-Mobile for non-Greeks) I really enjoyed wasting hours of my life calling a hotline for some ports. I'm not even sure if I'll continue with this homelab or not. Moving into a new apartment soon, I know damn well I'm not using cosmote again. (or i'll just pay for the business plans for static ip too ngl)
Update 20-05-2025: I got XMPP working but seems like port forwarding is being filtered on E-Mail ports so ig no email (yet)