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.
Not only is it likely, it’s pretty much guaranteed that a bot will scrap your network if it’s opened to the public.
So I have jellyfin deployed to my kubernetes home lab, router port forwarded to the ingress controller (essentially a reverse proxy) on the cluster. So exposed to the internet. Everything on it has authentication, either built in to the application or using an oauth proxy. All applications also have valid SSL configurations thanks to the reverse proxy. I also use cloudflare DNS with their proxy enabled to access it and have firewall rules to drop traffic that hits port 80/443 that doesn’t originate from those cloudflare proxy ips (required some scripting to automate). It drops a lot of traffic every day. I have other secuirty measures in place as well, but those are the big ones.
So yeah, if you expose your router to the internet, its gonna get pinged a lot by bots and someone might try to get in. Using a VPN is a very simple way to do this securely without exposing yourself and I’d suggest going that route unless you know what you’re doing.
Look into setting up mesh networks. Opening up a port will work, but it’s insecure, while tools like netbird or tailscale still allow you connect to it remotely, but only allow YOU and the people YOU want to allow to connect to it, not the entire world
Strong suggestion for Tailscale here. It is incredibly easy to use and very easy to set up with multiple users. Opening ports directly to the internet is a thing of the past for me now, ever since I started.
Depending on your routers you might me able to set up a “site-to-site” VPN which means your Xbox could connect directly to your Jellyfins local IP
