Host setup guide

About 30 minutes. Menu names are from GL.iNet 4.x firmware and can differ slightly on yours.

You don’t need to know networking. If you can follow steps exactly and type what we show you, you can do this. Some steps name a technical setting so you can find it on your own router; we say what each one is for.

What you need

Full list, with models, where to buy and prices: what you need. Haven’t bought a Brume yet? Do the two-minute “can your home host?” check first.

A GL.iNet Brume 2 (model GL-MT2500 or GL-MT2500A, about $70–90).
Home internet with at least 20 Mbps upload (50 Mbps or more earns the Fast badge). Digital nomads share your upload, so check your plan and any data cap.
Ideally, your internet provider’s OK. See Your internet provider below.
Access to your home router’s admin page, to forward one port.
A laptop with an Ethernet port (or adapter), and an AirNomadNetwork invite (request one).

What nomads can see

While connected, a nomad’s traffic leaves through your home internet connection, so they can see your home’s internet (IP) address, and roughly what city or area it’s in, just as any website you visit can. They can’t see your street address or your name: only your internet provider can link that address to your home, and AirNomadNetwork never shows nomads who you are.

Nomads can’t reach your home network or devices through AirNomadNetwork, and they can’t send email straight to mail servers, which is how spam gets a home address blocklisted (everything that’s blocked, and why). To stay safe from the wider internet too, keep your home router’s software up to date, and don’t expose devices like cameras, file sharing or remote access to the internet.

Steps

Create your account and verify your ID.
Request an invite and choose host. Once we email you, sign up at airnomadnetwork.com/app with that email. After we’ve added your Brume (step 7), open My Hosting Connection, accept the Host Agreement and click Verify my ID (a photo ID and a selfie, checked by Stripe). Nomads never learn who you are.
Connect the Brume.
Plug an Ethernet cable from a spare port on your home router into the Brume’s WAN port, and power it on. Connect your laptop to the Brume’s LAN port (the Brume 2 has no Wi-Fi). Open http://192.168.8.1, choose a language and set an admin password. Then go to System → Upgrade and install any update.

If your home network also uses 192.168.8.x addresses, the Brume moves itself to a different address. Its admin page shows the new one: use it here and in step 8.
Give the Brume a fixed address on your home network.
In your home router’s admin page, find the Brume in the list of connected devices and reserve its address (often called DHCP reservation or static lease). Write that address down: you’ll forward a port to it.
Turn on the WireGuard server. This is the door nomads’ encrypted connections come in through.
In the Brume’s admin page, go to VPN → WireGuard Server. Generate the configuration, keep the default addresses (10.0.0.1/24), note the Listen Port (usually 51820) and start the server. Don’t add any clients yourself: AirNomadNetwork adds and removes nomads for you.
Turn on Dynamic DNS. This gives your Brume a name nomads can always find, even when your home internet address changes.
Go to Applications → Dynamic DNS and enable it. Note the name it gives your router, such as abc123.glddns.com. It keeps working when your home internet address changes.
Forward the WireGuard port on your home router. This tells your home router to pass nomads’ connections to the Brume.
In your home router’s admin page, find Port Forwarding (sometimes under NAT, Gaming or Advanced). Forward UDP port 51820 (or the Listen Port from step 4) to the Brume’s address from step 3. Searching your router’s brand plus “port forwarding” finds the exact steps.

Some internet providers share one address between many homes (called CGNAT), which blocks port forwarding. Compare the internet (WAN) address on your home router’s status page with ifconfig.me: if they differ, or the router’s starts with 100.64 to 100.127, ask your provider for a public IP address.
Send us your details.
Reply to your invite email with the Dynamic DNS name, the port and your city. We add your Brume and send back an install command made just for your router. Keep it private: it works only for your Brume.
Run the install command on the Brume. This installs AirNomadNetwork’s software, which adds and removes nomads and walls off your home network.
On your laptop (still connected to the Brume), open a terminal: Command Prompt on Windows, Terminal on a Mac. Connect to the Brume with its admin password:
```
ssh root@192.168.8.1
```
Paste the install command we sent (right-click pastes in Command Prompt) and press Enter. It checks everything before changing anything, and finishes with Installed. If it stops, it says why and nothing is changed.

Want to read it first? See Look before you run below.
Check My Hosting Connection.
Within a minute, My Hosting Connection in the app should show Online and Home network wall: On. Before nomads can book you, we run a test connection with you to make sure nomads can reach it.

Day to day

Keep the Brume plugged in. Nomads can only connect while it’s online, and your availability is part of your reputation.
Your reputation on My Hosting Connection shows what nomads see: your measured upload speed and how much of the last 30 days you were available. Hosts with 50 Mbps or more upload earn the Fast badge, hosts available 99% of the time earn Reliable (pausing while nomads are connected removes it for 30 days), and hosts with badges are listed first. Upgraded your plan? Use Test my speed again.
Pause hosting on My Hosting Connection disconnects everyone within seconds and stops new bookings until you resume. Unplugging the Brume stops everything too.
If your plan has a data cap, keep an eye on Data used on My Hosting Connection. Nomads’ data counts about twice against your cap: once coming into your home and once going out to them.
If your internet provider sends you an abuse notice, report it from My Hosting Connection with the date, time and port it lists.
When we ask you to update, connect over ssh as in step 8 and run:
```
airnomad-agent.sh update
```

Your internet provider

Many home internet plans don’t allow sharing your connection outside your household, and some forbid it outright. If yours does and your provider finds out, it could warn you or suspend your service. We recommend telling your provider you’re hosting before you start. It’s not required, and whether to host is your decision. Some providers grant permission on request, and business internet plans often allow sharing with guests or customers.

A message you could send your provider:

Hi, I’d like to let you know that I plan to share part of my home internet connection with
a small number of ID-verified remote workers through AirNomadNetwork (airnomadnetwork.com).
Their traffic is walled off from my home network, sending email directly to mail servers is
blocked, and any abuse report can be traced to the person responsible. Is this allowed on my
plan, or is there a plan you'd recommend for it?

Look before you run

Your Brume stays your own off-the-shelf router; our software is a short, readable script you can check before it runs.

The agent, installer and updater are shared only with hosts. Once you’re invited to host and signed in, read them on My Hosting Connection in the app, under Read the host software. Your router downloads the same files with its own private token.
Anyone can read the uninstaller, so you can always remove the software, even without an account.

In plain terms, the installer and agent:

Save your Brume’s AirNomadNetwork number and its private token in a settings file only the router’s admin can read.
Add firewall rules that wall nomads off from your home network and router, block email sent straight to mail servers, and give each nomad their own block of ports (details).
Add and remove nomads on the WireGuard server you set up, as they book and leave.
Every 10 seconds, tell AirNomadNetwork whether the wall is up, your router’s WireGuard public key, and for each nomad their connection time and how much data they used. Never where that data went.
Every 6 hours, check that your home router keeps nomads’ port blocks intact.
About twice a week, at a different time of day each time, measure your upload speed by sending AirNomadNetwork filler data (zeros) for up to 12 seconds: up to 100 MB a test, at most about 1 GB a month on a fast connection. It waits until no nomad is active and, judging by how quickly AirNomadNetwork answers, your home isn’t busy uploading, and stops at once if a nomad connects. Only the speed is kept.

They don’t change your admin password, your other settings, or anything on your home network.

Leaving AirNomadNetwork

To stop for a while, use Pause hosting on My Hosting Connection. To remove AirNomadNetwork completely, connect over ssh as in step 8 and run:

airnomad-agent.sh uninstall

That works even without an internet connection. If the agent is missing or broken, run the public uninstaller instead: curl -fsS https://airnomadnetwork.com/agent/uninstall.sh | sh

It disconnects any nomads and removes our agent, its firewall rules and its settings, leaving a standard GL.iNet router. You can then turn off the WireGuard server under VPN → WireGuard Server, and tell us so we can remove your Brume from AirNomadNetwork.