Comment on Is it possible to run a reverse proxy only on a specific service or port?

• maxwellfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  How will a reverse proxy help?

  Things that a reverse proxy is often used for:

  • making multiple services hosted on the same IP and port
  • SSL termination so that the wider world speaks https and the proxy speaks http to the server. This means the server doesn’t have to do its own key management
  • load balancing services so multiple servers can serve the same request (technically a load balancer but I believe some fever proxies do basic load balancing)
  • adding authentication in front of services that don’t have their own (note that some of the protections/utility is lost if you use http. Anyone who can see your traffic will also be able to authenticate. It’s not zero protection though because random internet users probably can’t see your traffic)
  • probably something I’m forgetting

  Do any of these match what you’re trying to accomplish? What do you hope to gain by adding a reverse proxy (or maybe some other software better suited to your need)?

  source

  • FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Thank you for the very informative reply.

    The HTTP and Gemini services are for vintage clients, but I would like the reverse proxy to keep my media collection private (and maybe SSH and SMB too). So I’m serving to modern clients in the case of reverse proxy. I was told that port forwarding is no longer considered secure enough and that if my media gets publicly exposed I could be liable for damages to license holders.

    source

    • maxwellfire@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Reverse proxies don’t keep anything private. That’s not what they are for. And if you do use them, you still have to do port forwarding (assuming the proxy is behind your router).

      For most home hosting, a reverse proxy doesn’t offer any security improvement over just port forwarding directly to the server, assuming the server provides the access controls you want.

      If you’re looking to access your services securely, then what you want is a VPN (for vpns, you also often have to port forward). Now, there’s a problem because companies have completely corrupted the normal meaning of a VPN with things like nordvpn that are actually more like proxies and less like VPNs. A self hosted VPN will allow you to connect to your hone network and all the services on it without having to expose those services to the internet.

      In a way, VPNs often function in practice like reverse proxies. They both control traffic from the outside before it gets to things inside. But deeper than this they are quite different. A reverse proxy controls access to particular services. Usually http based and pretty much always TCP/IP or UDP/IP based. A VPN controls access to a network (hence the name virtual private network). When setup, it shows up on your clients like any other Ethernet cable or WiFi network you would plug in. You can then access other computers that are on the VPN, or given access to to the VPN though the VPN server.

      The VPN softwares usually recommended for this kind of setup are wireguard/openvpn or tailscale/zerotier. The first two are more traditional VPN servers, while the second two are more distributed/“serverless” VPN tools.

      source

      • FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        That is such a clear explanation and makes a lot of sense, thank you again.

        Since the services I’m interested in serving are authenticated then it sounds like HTTPS is what I need (which is what originally made the most sense to me). That’s a relief. I just need to figure out how to have separate HTTP and HTTPS services hosted from the one ARM service.

        source

        • -> View More Comments