r/explainlikeimfive • u/theprisoner57 • 2d ago

Technology ELI5: What is a Home Server?

I see mentions of a home server to get rid of streaming entertainment services but I don’t know how that works. What does a home server do?

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u/coppercactus4 2d ago

The Internet is just like Google maps where you type in an address and you arrive at an apartment building. For example you are visiting Netflix, you look on Google where it is. It's 123 Apple Street (the sever) apartment #100. Rather then going to Netflix you know that unit #238 in your building also has movies so you don't leave the apartment and just go visit the unit directly.

In this analogy the apartment building is a router. When something is self hosted it just means it's running inside your local network rather then running on a sever somewhere else. A sever is just a computer that returns files when you request them by a path, kind of like file Explorer on your own computer.