Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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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 (in the sense that only you will even know they exist), then what you want is a VPN (for vpns, you also often have to port forward, though sometimes the forwarding/router firewall hole punching is setup automatically). If the service already provides authentication and you want to be able to easily share it with friends/family etc then a VPN is the wrong tool too (but in this case setting up HTTPS is a must, probably through something like letsencrypt)
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.
I'm sorry if this is a lot of information/terminology. Feel free to ask more questions.
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.
You have two options for setting up https certificates and then some more options for enabling it on the server:
1: you can generate a self signed certificate. This will make an angry scary warning in all browsers and may prevent chrome from connecting at all (I can't remember the status of this). Its security is totally fine if you are the one using the service since you can verify the key is correct
2: you can get a certificate to a domain that you own and then point it at the server. The best way to do this is probably through letsencrypt. This requires owning a domain, but those are like $12 a year, and highly recommended for any services exposed to the world. (You can continue to use a dynamic DNS setup, but you need one that supports custom domains)
Now that you have a certificate you need to know, Does the service your hosting support https directly. If it does, then you install the certificates in it and call it a day. If it doesn't, then this is where a reverse proxy is helpful. You can then setup the reverse proxy to use the certificate with https and then it will connect to the server over http. This is called SSL termination.
There's also the question of certificate renewal if you choose the letsencrypt option. Letsencrypt requires port 80 to do a certificate renewal. If you have a service already running on port 80 (on the router's external side), then you will have a conflict. This is the second case where a reverse proxy is helpful. It can allow two services (letsencrypt certificates renewal and your other service) to run on the same external port. If you don't need port 80, then you don't need it. I guess you could also setup a DNS based certificate challenge and avoid this issue. That would depend on your DNS provider.
So to summarize:
IF service doesn't support SSL/https OR (want a letsencrypt certificate AND already using port 80)
Then use a reverse proxy (or maybe do DNS challenge with letsencrypt instead)
ELSE:
You don't need one, but can still use one.
Thank you again for the response. The summary is very helpful too.
It looks like I don’t need the reverse proxy, since the sensitive services* support authentication and HTTPS.
I would need the lighttpd service to be available over unsecured HTTP too, but if that’s not possible I could always use a different subdomain.