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Remotely access self-hosted services

· One min read
Jonathan Nye
Jonathan Nye
Engineering @ Tesla

I recently wanted to access a service on my local computer remotely. The problem was that I generally use a VPN, which means there is no straightforward way to set up port forwarding (at least with my provider).

I had successfully set up port forwarding, dynamic DNS and had a domain for the service without the VPN. I just couldn't figure out how to get it to work with the VPN. I had accepted that sometimes I wouldn't be able to access the service remotely.

I use Cloudflare as my DNS, and use their pages service to host this site. After browsing through their numerous services, they offer, I stumbled across Cloudflare Tunnel.

Cloudflare Tunnel

Cloudflare Tunnel exposes applications running on your local web server on any network with an internet connection without manually adding DNS records or configuring a firewall or router.

Bingo! Exactly what was needed.

I followed Cloudflare Tunnel · Cloudflare Zero Trust docs and within 30 minutes the service was accessible, with and without the VPN.

Now I have my service accessible at a fixed URL, reliably and without having to mess around with my router and Dynamic DNS.