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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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A reverse proxy takes all your web-based services, e.g.
and allows you to map these to domain names, so instead of typing
server.example.com:32400you can typeplex.example.com. I have simplified this quite a bit though - you need DNS configured as well, and depending on your requirements you may want to purchase a domain name if you intend on accessing content from outside your home without a self hosted VPN.Cloudflare is a DDoS mitigation service, a caching web proxy, and a DNS nameserver. Most users here would probably be using it for Dynamic DNS. You can use it in combination with a reverse proxy as a means to mask your home IP address from people connecting to your self hosted web-based services remotely, but on its own it cannot be used as a reverse proxy (at least easily - would not recommend attempting to). Do note that Cloudflare can see all the data you transmit through their systems, something to bare in mind if you are privacy conscious.
In my opinion though, it would be much better for you to use a self hosted VPN to access your self hosted services (can be used in combination with the reverse proxy), unless there is a specific need to expose the services out to the internet
Edit: fix minor typo, add extra info about cloudflare
So a reverse proxy is a way to manage subdomains? I read somewhere that it allows multiple different services to be hosted on the same port and I think I know that that is probably a lie.
Edit: whoops, got a little bit sidetracked and didn't talk about cloudflare at all. I'll leave it up nonetheless as it contains info.
The reverse proxy only listens on port 80 and 443, so yes, all your services will be accessible through just one/two ports.
The reverse proxy will parse the http request headers and ask the appropriate upstream service (e.g. jellyfin) on localhost:12345 what it should send as a reply. Yes, this means that you need to have a http header so that the reverse proxy can differentiate the services. You don't need to buy a domain for that, you can use iPhone to make your made up domain map to a local IP address, but you need to call the reverse proxy as sub.domain.com. 192.168.0.123:80 won't work, because the proxy has no idea which service you want to reach.
I found it really easy to set up with docker compose and caddy as a reverse proxy. Docker services on the same network automatically resolve their names so the configuration file for caddy (the reverse proxy) is literally just
sub.mydomain.com { reverse_proxy jellyfin:12345 }. This will expose the jellyfin docker, which is listening on port 12345, as sub.mydomain.com on port 80.