When I see this sort of thing, and other people are trying to do it, a reverse proxy or vpn is always mentioned. Heres my question:
How Dangerous is it to just open the port for it on my router and access it like that?
Lets say i want to access jellyfin from Kodi on my xbox or something outside my network, the vpn solution wouldnt work for this i would think.
My issue with reverse proxies, and why im asking, is it seems less secure? I mean Im well aware that an IP is easy to get, i guess. But how likely is someone to look for something on my network specifically? With reverse proxies it seems like i would be broadcasting my server to the internet in a way its easier to happen across, than someone being interested in a random residential IP.
I run a minecraft server for friends on my main computer anyway, and i know tons of people do that, theoretically thats the same level of danger as opening my network for jellyfin specifically.
VPN isnt an option because of this xbox stuff i mentioned and people in my family who have 0 chance of understanding it regardless.
So what is the better option, going through this reverse proxy ( which im actually also unsure would work with kodi) or rawdog the server on my network. I guess leaving the server exposed? or every device even.
Someone may have commented this already but my recommendation is to set up an overlay network like tailscale or twingate.
Doesn’t require you to open any ports on your firewall, and Tailscale at least is very performant since it uses Wireguard as it’s underlying protocol. (I have yet to test Twingate but I’ve heard positive things.)
It will require a little more setup per device but it’s honestly incredibly simple and more than secure enough for a home network.
Tailscale also has something called a subnet router which you can use to get incompatible devices onto the tailnet.