Server Guide

The role of servers in QtEasyTier networking: As a decentralized networking tool, EasyTier does not inherently distinguish between servers and clients. However, not everyone has a public IP address, which means you cannot directly form a network with others’ devices. A server can be seen as a public node. Unlike traditional centralized networking servers, EasyTier’s public nodes primarily help multiple devices establish P2P connections for networking. Once devices join the network, the connection does not depend on the server — as long as you maintain a P2P connection with at least one member, your data packets can be routed to other members within the network. In other words, QtEasyTier (EasyTier) public servers serve more as a network “entry point” rather than a “sustainer.”

Joining Public Servers

QtEasyTier includes a list of community-contributed public servers. You can choose to join them.

• Click the Public Server List button on the network’s basic settings page.
• In the popup, click the public server address you want to add — the address will turn cyan when selected.
• Click OK and the selected servers will be automatically added to your server list.

Tip

• The public server list is not updated in real time; some servers may have expired.
• The server list is stored in the publicserver.json file in the installation directory. You can manually edit this file to add or remove servers.
• We periodically update the public server list here. You can choose to add entries from there or replace the file in your installation directory.

Deploying Your Own Server

If you are not satisfied or comfortable using public servers, you can deploy your own. Please refer to the following documentation:

• Deploy a Personal Server
• Deploy a Public Server
• Deploy a Server via NAT Traversal

There are multiple ways to deploy the server side: GUI, CLI (easytier-core), Docker / Cloud App containerized deployment, etc. The GUI method requires the server system to have a graphical interface; this tutorial uses QtEasyTier for deployment. CLI and containerized methods use the official EasyTier core binary easytier-core. easytier-core can be launched via startup parameters, configuration files, etc. The tutorials cover as many approaches as possible.

Tip

The deployed server can be used not only with QtEasyTier — in theory, any networking tool using EasyTier as the backend that supports specifying a network name and password can join it, such as Astral Game, EasyTier-GUI (official GUI), EasyTier-Manager, etc.