Do I need a pub server?

[Risotto Bias]

Something that doesn't seem to be clarified...

Do I need to open ports on my home network to have good connectivity to peers on SSB?

Is there a working (or even better, maintained), pub server implementation?
It seems like the way rooms are described they are only an ephemeral list of peers, not an always online copy of data.

There's lots of client implementations for SSB, but what about the server/pubs / always online clients?

Thanks :D