this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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I'm pretty new to selfhosting and homelabs, and I would appreciate a simple-worded explanation here. Details are always welcome!

So, I have a home network with a dynamic external IP address. I already have my Synology NAS exposed to the Internet with DDNS - this was done using the interface, so didn't require much technical knowledge.

Now, I would like to add another server (currently testing with Raspberry Pi) in the same LAN that would also be externally reachable, either through a subdomain (preferable), or through specific ports. How do I go about it?

P.S. Apparently, what I've tried on the router does work, it's just that my NAS was sitting in the DMZ. Now it works!

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[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 69 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You need a reserve proxy. That's a piece of software that takes the requests and puts them toward the correct endpoint.

You need to create port forwards in the router and direct 80 and 443 (or whatever you're using) toward the host of the reverse proxy and that is listening to on those ports. If it recognized the requests are for nas.your.domain, it will forward the requests to the NAS.

Common reverse proxies are nginx or caddy. You can install it on your raspberry, it doesn't need it's own device.

If you don't want that, you can create different port forwards on your router (e.g. 8080 and 8443 to the Raspi) and configure your service on the Raspi corresponding. But it doesn't scale well and you'd need to call everything with the port and the reverse proxy is the usual solution.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There's an issue with that first part. Do I configure it right? Should :8100 be redirected to 192.168.0.113:81 in this case?

[–] infeeeee@lemmy.zip 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

External 80 to internal 80 and external 443 to internal 443

With this config you don't have to deal with ports later, as http is 80, https is 443 by default.

If you run some container on port 81, you have to deal with that in the reverse proxy, not in the router. E.g. redirect something.domian.tld to 192.168.0.103:81

If you use docker check out nginxproxymanager, it has a very beginner friendly admin webui. You shouldn't forward the admin ui's port, you need to access it only from your lan.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Actually, I do - 81 is exactly the default port for nginx proxy manager. I just tried to expose it as a testing example, and already closed it back after a success (apparently port forwarding worked just fine, it's just that DMZ messed with it)

And since we're talking about this, what do I do with it next? I have it on my Pi, how do I ensure traffic is distributed through it as a reverse proxy? Do I need to expose ports 80 and 443 and then it would work automagically all by itself?

[–] infeeeee@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You type the ip of the rpi on the router, so from an external call the router will forward it to the rpi. Or I don't know what is your question.

Things may seem automagical in the networking scene, but you can config anything the way you want. Even in nginxproxymanager you can edit the underlying actual nginx configs with their full power. The automagic is just the default setting.

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[–] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This only guarantees your WANip:8100 will map to 192.168.0.113:81, and doesn't address whether or not dns resolution is correct. I would also be weary of using port numbers on wikipedia's known ports list, as some ISPs will filter those upstream. The last thing is that your router may not want to hairpin that traffic, so if you're not coming in from the outside it might not be a valid test.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the pieces of advice! Yes, I tried to connect from external (mobile) network as well.

[–] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 35 points 1 week ago

Welcome to the wonderful world of reverse proxies!

[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If you mean HTTP server, what you need is a reverse proxy and name-based virtual hosts. I usually use nginx for such tasks, but you may choose another web server that has these features.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I recommend caddy as a webserver, it's very powerful, but the config is super simple compared to old school stuff like nginx or apache.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago

Heard quite a few positive reviews on that one, thanks!

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[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 week ago

You can either:

A) Use a different port, just set up the new service to run on a port that's not used by the other service.

B) If it's a TCP service use a reverse proxy and a subdomain.

[–] Nate066@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

VPN is definitely the way to go for home networks. Your router even has one built in. OpenVPN and Wireguard are good.

If you really want to expose stuff like this the proper way is to isolate your home network from your internet exposed network using a VLAN. Then use a reverse proxy, like caddy and place everything behind it.

Another benefit of a reverse proxy is you don't need to setup https certs on everything just the proxy.

You do need a business or prosumer router for this though. Something like Firewalla or setting up a OpenWRT or OPNsense.

Synology also has there quick connect service as well. While not great if you keep UPNP off and ensure your firewall and login rate limiting is turned on it may be better then just directly exposing stuff. But its had its fair share of problems so yeah.

Consider not self hosting everything. For example if all your family cares about is private photo storage, consider using a open source E2EE encrypted service for photos on the cloud like Ente Photos. Then you can use VPN for the rest. https://www.privacyguides.org/ has some recommendations for privacy friendly stuff.

Also consider the fallout that would happen if you are hacked. If all your photos and other things get leaked because your setup was not secure was it really any better than using big tech?

If nothing else please tell me you are using properly setup https certs from Let's Encrypt or another good CA. Using a firewall and have login rate limiting setup on everything that is exposed. You can also test your SSL setup using something like https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

No truly private photos ever enter the NAS, so on that front it should be fine.

VPN is not an option for several reasons, unfortunately.

But I do have a Let's Encrypt certificate, firewall and I ban IP after 5 unsuccessful login attempts. I also have SSH disabled completely.

SSL Test gave me a rating of A

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

What are you running?

If it is http based use a reverse proxy like Caddy

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Update: tried Caddy, love it, dead simple, super fast, and absolutely works!

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

For now just some experiments alongside NAS

Planning to host Bitwarden, Wallabag and other niceties on the server, and then when I get something more powerful, spin up Minecraft server and stuff

[–] greybeard@feddit.online 3 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I'll be honest, if you aren't planning on sharing with others, I'd recommend switching to something like wireguard to connect back into your house instead of exposing everything publicly. Some firewalls have wireguard built in, so you can setup the VPN easily. But then all you have to do is keep your VPN endpoint safe to keep your internal network protected from the Internet, instead of having to worry about the security of everything you expose.

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[–] skankhunt42@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Router gets the public IP. Login to it, find port forwarding option. You'll pick a public port. IE 443 and forward it to a local IP:port combo, IE 192.168.0.101:443.

Then you can pick another public port and forward it to a different private IP:port combo.

If you want a subdomain, you forward one port to one host and have it do the work. IE configure Nginx to do whatever you want.

EDIT: or you use IPv6. Everything is a public IP.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago (6 children)
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[–] towerful@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Who is externally reaching these servers?
Joe public? Or just you and people you trust?

If it's Joe public, I wouldn't have the entry point on my home network (I might VPS tunnel, or just VPS host it).

If it's just me and people I trust, I would use VPN for access, as opposed to exposing all these services publicly

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 5 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Just me and the people I trust, but there are certain inconveniences around using VPN for access.

First, I live in the jurisdiction that is heavily restrictive, so VPN is commonly in use to bypass censorship

Second, I sometimes access my data from computers I trust but can't install VPN clients on

Third, I share my NAS resources with my family, and getting my mom to use a VPN every time she syncs her photos is near impossible

So, fully recognizing the risks, I feel like I have to expose a lot of my services.

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[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 2 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Your stuff is more likely to get scanned sitting in a VPS with no firewall than behind a firewall on a home network

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[–] greybeard@feddit.online 7 points 1 week ago (12 children)

The synology NAS can act as a reverse proxy for stuff inside your network. I don't have mine in front of me, so you will have to google the steps, but basically you point the synology to an internal resource and tell it what external subdomain it should respond to.

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[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Whispers “try proxmox”

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I will eventually!

But for all I understand, it is to put many services on one machine, and I already have a NAS that is not going anywhere

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've gone the other way. I used to run a Proxmox cluster, then someone gave me a Synology NAS. Now it's rare that I spin up Proxmox and instead use a mix of VMs, containers and Synology/Synocommunity apps.

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[–] pleksi@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I really feel like people who are beginners shouldnt play with exposing their services. When you set up Caddy or some other reverse proxy and actually monitor it with something like fail2ban you can see that the crawlers etc are pretty fast to find your services. If any user has a very poor password (or is reusing a leaked one) then someone has pretty open access to their stuff and you wont even notice unless you’re logging stuff.

Of course you can set up 2FA etc but that’s pretty involved compared to a simple wg tunnel that lives on your router.

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[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you go with IPv6, all your devices/servers have their own IP. These IPs are valid in your LAN as well a externally.

But it's still important to use a reverse proxy (e.g. for TLS).

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oh, nice! So I don't have just one, but many external IPs, one for every local device?

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[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Good to hear you figured it out with router settings. I'm also new to this but got all that figured out this week. As other commenters say I went with a reverse proxy and configured it. I choose caddy over nginx for easy of install and config. I documented just about every step of the process. I'm a little scared to share my website on public fourms just yet but PM me ill send you a link if you want to see my infrastructure page where I share the steps and config files.

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[–] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

If you have a prosumer router I suggest you to use the ddns in the router plus a reverse proxy. This would be the cleanest solution.

If you can not, once everything is working with your external access to the synology, the dsm has a built-in reverse proxy so it can redirect http requests to another server. Although this proxy is really simple and limited it can get the work done if you setup is simple enough.

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[–] jacksquat@what.forfi.win 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Honestly Cloudflare Tunnels could be a very simple way to do it. I've always had tremendous luck with it. By using CF you can let them do all the heavy lifting instead of hosting your own... as long as you trust them.

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

They are a plague with how prevalent they have become.

The internet shouldn’t put all its eggs into one basket.

It’s just another centralized entity which will lead to monopolized power. It goes against what we are trying to do with federated networks like Lemmy and mastodon.

[–] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago

What's a better alternative that offer good ddos protection and tunnels

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[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

You can use frp to do the same thing a CloudFlare tunnel does without giving them your unencrypted data.

https://github.com/fatedier/frp

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

While not supportive of Big Tech, I do appreciate your piece of advice, and understand self-hosting needs differ!

P.S. Also beware, seems like there's a new attack through Tunnels:

https://www.csoonline.com/article/4009636/phishing-campaign-abuses-cloudflare-tunnels-to-sneak-malware-past-firewalls.html

[–] jacksquat@what.forfi.win 3 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the heads up!

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