Self-hosted · Peer-to-peer · Open source
Self-hosted "dial-up" BBS.
Reborn over peer-to-peer.
alt-p2p-bbs is an open-source bulletin board system — ANSI art, forums, real-time chat — that friends dial into over an encrypted peer-to-peer connection. No public IP, no port forwarding, no data stored in the cloud.
◢ no public IP · no port forwarding · no data stored in the cloud
A real board — not a nostalgia demo.
Every room of the old boards, running for real: accounts, forums, live chat, and the sysop's inbox.
Everything a BBS should be
ANSI-art welcome screens, user accounts, forums with threaded messages, real-time multi-user chat, and a message-to-sysop box. Persisted, not faked.
Modem simulation
Watch the screen paint in at 300 / 1200 / 2400 baud — or a fixed slow-wire crawl — for the authentic "dial-up" feel.
Every screen is a text file
Screens, colors, prompts, ASCII art — all plain text you edit live. Changes apply on the fly, with no rebuilds and no restarts.
Bring your own terminal
Use the built-in "dial-up" client, or point any standalone telnet client at it. Old-school access, modern transport.
No phone line. No public IP. No cloud.
Two machines try to punch through their routers and talk directly. When they can't, a lightweight coordination server relays the traffic — end-to-end encrypted, so it never sees your data.
when possible
either way
The coordinator is required, but open source — run your own, or, for business, let us host one for you.
The BBS is the fun part.
Underneath is a general-purpose, encrypted peer-to-peer transport for connecting machines across networks — no public IP, no port forwarding, nothing of yours exposed to the internet. Dialing a BBS is just our favorite way to show it off.
There's a whole BBS legacy to bring back.
Door games, and more. If you loved those — or just want to build them — the code is open and contributions are very welcome.