Comment on Why is everyone using Tailscale?
Xanza@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
A reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx is like a bouncer for your web services. It sits out front, deciding who gets in and where they’re allowed to go. It’s great for stuff you want to expose to the internet – like a website or web app – because it hides your actual servers, can handle HTTPS for you, and lets you set up some basic access rules.
A VPN is more like a secret underground tunnel between you and your server. Everything that goes through it is locked down to only members of the VPN. This is what you want when you’re dealing with private stuff you don’t want exposed to the open internet, like your home lab dashboard or some internal tools. The beauty of a VPN is that it works for everything–not just web traffic. SSH, file transfers, databases. All of it gets the same protection.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Yup. I use it for sftp, ssh. I’ve never used in relation to a database. Is that for remote db? I am working on routeing mail through tailscale to a relay, since my host, for whatever reason, blocks mail ports and charges to have them turned on. I just wanted alert emails from a couple apps.
Xanza@lemm.ee 17 hours ago
Should work fine. Your provider can’t stop you from opening ports unless its a shared environment and you don’t have permission/the port is already in use. Generally what they do is just block connections from outside. So if you use a VPN you’re sidestepping that issue. With the VPN in place, and the server online and running you should be able to connect via
{VPN_IP}:995, etc.irmadlad@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
For every technology there exists an equal, yet undoing technology.