Hi, would it be possible to specify a hostname for sync? I want to be able to port-forward DEVONthink Server so it could be accessed from the internet, set up a domain name for my public IP, and sync using the domain name. I can’t figure out how to get Bonjour working via VPN (Wireguard). Thanks!
How do you sync? Bonjour, WebDAV, iCloud, Dropbox, something else?
I currently use Bonjour when I’m at home and have access to the local network, but I want DEVONthink To Go to sync while I’m not at home as well.
I’m assuming you have a router to which you connect using Wireguard from a portable device. Then you have a DT server behind the router.
If your router is 192.168.1.x, your devices are 192.168.1.y and 192.168.1.z, it should be possible to connect them using Bonjour because they are in the same network. But Bonjour relies on mDNS which is not travelling through the VPN. So, no.
That makes no sense. Your VPN should give you a private IP address, in your local home network. Your public IP address is out of the game here. And it must be, since Bonjour is not a publicly routed protocol. And port forwarding is not related to VPN, either – you’d do one or the other, imo.
Your best bet is to install a WebDAV server on the machine running your DT Server and let that one handle your sync.
I don’t know much about how Bonjour works but I assumed it’s a service that can listen to a port for incoming requests like a regular web server. When I open Sync → Bonjour Options in DEVONthink Server, it shows a field for “port” and “password”, and I assumed I can forward that port and access it via my home network’s public IP (not the IP via my VPN). Sounds like that is not possible because it’s not a publicly routed protocol?
Bonjour does not work over VPN.
That is not the case. Bonjour is a zero conf protocol, much like DHCP. The “port” you see in DT is arbitrary, see the Sync: Bonjour chapter in the help. As I said before: Bonjour is a local network protocol, so there is nothing to forward.
Exactly. If you want to access your server, you can do that via VPN & http(s). If you want to sync, you need something works across network boundaries: WebDAV, iCloud, Dropbox.
Unless you manage to route mDNS through it. There are descriptions floating around on The Net, but it seems to be complicated to achieve.
It’s definitely nothing supported by default nor what we want to troubleshoot 
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Agreed. Not for the faint of heart, it seems. And if someone can set up all that, they might as well run a WebDAV server for sync.
That’s unfortunate… In that case I’ll look into setting up a WebDAV server instead. Thanks for the pointers!
Have you determined that you don’t want to use a third party sync service, e.g. Dropbox, third-party WebDAV, etc. instead of rolling your own?
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