Moving Off SNIP: a Hosted NTRIP Caster Migration

SNIP has carried the DIY RTK community for a decade — it's capable software, and RTK2go, the biggest free caster on the planet, runs on it. But SNIP is a desktop caster: it lives on a Windows PC at your site, and everything that's annoying about running your own server comes with it. If you're searching for a SNIP alternative, it's probably because one of these finally got old:

• The always-on PC. Windows updates reboot it, power blips kill it, and every outage takes your corrections down with it.
• Port forwarding and addressing. Your rovers reach the caster through your router, so you're maintaining a forwarded port plus a static IP or dynamic DNS — and cellular or Starlink connections with CGNAT can't accept inbound connections at all.
• One shared secret. Handing your caster password to a crew member, contractor, or neighbor means re-configuring everyone when you want to revoke one person.
• Nobody's watching. When the stream degrades — antenna bumped, receiver rebooted into a default config — you find out from an angry rover operator, not from the caster.

What a hosted caster changes

With a hosted caster like RoboGNSS, the caster stops being your problem. Your base makes an outbound connection to a private mountpoint (outbound works through any router, CGNAT included), and everything downstream runs in the cloud:

| Running SNIP yourself | Hosted | | --- | --- | | PC uptime is your uptime | Caster runs 24/7, not in your shed | | Forwarded port + static IP/DDNS | Outbound-only; works behind CGNAT | | One password for everyone | Per-rover credentials, revocable one by one | | You notice outages via complaints | Live health: uptime strip, satellite view, position checks | | Manual logging for RINEX | Raw archive, any window downloadable as RINEX | | Extra streams = more setup | Forward to Onocoy, RTK2go, or any caster with a form |

The migration, step by step

Budget an afternoon; most of it is walking to the receiver.

1. Create the base station on RoboGNSS: name it, declare the surveyed position and datum (the caster continuously checks the broadcast 1005 against it), and copy the upload token.
2. Repoint the receiver. In its NTRIP server settings, replace your PC's address with your RoboGNSS mountpoint, port, and token. Both NTRIP v1 (SOURCE) and v2 are accepted, so any receiver that could talk to SNIP can talk to the hosted caster.
3. Move the rovers. Mint a credential per rover or crew member and update each rover's NTRIP client. This is the moment you stop sharing one password with the whole county.
4. Retire the PC — or leave SNIP installed as a LAN fallback for jobs with no internet. The two can coexist; a receiver with two NTRIP outputs can even feed both.

What you give up, honestly

A hosted caster needs an internet path from the base — SNIP on a LAN keeps working when the site is fully offline, and that's a real advantage for remote work with no connectivity. Power users also lean on SNIP's deeper machinery (NEAR mountpoints, PFAT transforms, plugin scripting) that a simpler hosted service doesn't replicate. If neither of those describes your setup, the trade is straightforward: you're exchanging server administration for a login page.

Costs

SNIP's free tier caps streams and the paid tiers are per-installation; add the electricity and the occasional Windows license for the dedicated PC. RoboGNSS is free for one base station with unlimited rover connections — which covers the single-base setup most SNIP home operators actually run.

Move your base over — and if that base could be earning on the side, read Feed Onocoy without giving up your own RTK.