Centralization is bad for everyone everywhere.
That bring said… I just moved my homeserver to another city… and I plugged in the power, then I plugged in the ethernet, and that was the whole shebang.
Tunnels made it very easy. No port forwarding no dns configuration no firewall fiddling no nothing.
Why do they have to make it so so easy…
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CF CloudFlare CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT DNS Domain Name Service/System NAT Network Address Translation VPN Virtual Private Network VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
[Thread #830 for this sub, first seen 26th Jun 2024, 04:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot.
I have written a small blog post about how to Bypass CGNAT, and have also mentioned why you should not use Cloudflare if you are hosting for privacy.
Why does Cloudflare get a pass on the “if it’s free, you’re the product” mantra of the self-hosting community? Honest question. They seem to provide a lot for free, so…
It’s usually free tiers of paid products
Strictly speaking, they’re leveraging free users to increase the number of domains they have under their DNS service. This gives them a larger end-user reach, as it in turn makes ISPs hit their DNS servers more frequently. The increased usage better positions them to lead peering agreement discussions with ISPs. More peering agreements leads to overall cheaper bandwidth for their CDN and faster responses, which they can use as a selling point for their enterprise clients. The benefits are pretty universal, so is actually a good thing for everyone all around… that is unless you’re trying to become a competitor and get your own peering agreement setup, as it’d be quite a bit harder for you to acquire customers at the same scale/pace.
That makes sense, except Google kinda does the same thing. Everything they have is technically just a “free tier” of the Google One subscription, right? I guess I’m saying that “free tier of paid product” doesn’t automatically qualify a company as trustworthy for me. Is there something else that sets Cloudflare apart?
Well search and maps (and some others) have no paid tier. Even for paid products, google does quite explicitly make money from the free version through ads. And most google ads are through third party sites, so you can’t opt out of them by paying google.
Quality of their products maybe? Cloudflare feels like they put a lot of effort into their product, Google not so much with how buggy everything is and how often they just abandon products they offer.
For me personally, it was all about balance.
15 years ago, Gmail/Inbox was a great email client, the domain was great and popular (so no need to spell it out for people) and I would “pay” by getting ads based on my emails read by a bot.
Now Gmail is a terrible email client, the best updates are ridiculous things like moving buttons around and it takes Google years to roll out. The thing loses emails, mislabels and misclassifies stuff and the rules work for a week then blow up. On top of that, google is now basically a proctologist considering how far up my ass they want to go
The balance is broken… Google now officially sucks (IMO)
In my opinion, the difference with Google is that Google is actively using your data and you’re giving them a lot of it. For Cloudflare, what do they have exactly? Depends on what services you use, but really all they get from me is the list of servers that connect to my domains. Google does that too if you use 8.8.8.8, or if you have any of their hardware that overrides router DNS settings like Chromecast and Google TV.
They have for public benefit program where they give out their paid security tiers for free? If you can get recommended into it. Build a lot of goodwill there for non-profits community.
Because most self hosted things are free already. It doesn’t apply to FOSS.
@shiftymccool @Kuvwert cause nobody wants to think about that.
also, when you have 5g failover on the router and the fiber it’s down, it automagically continues to work without admin intervention
Their static website hosting is probably the best in the business. We seriously need some competition though.
Even when you host a HUGE static website (e.g. maps with thousands of image files). You can just throw it on R2 add a few transform rules, point a domain at it, and you are done. Also highlights the usability of Cloudflare compared to other solutions.
I use Cloudflare as my registrar and public DNS. And only for that. Sorry but they don’t get to peek at my network traffic.
Unless you are behind CGNAT; you would have had the same plug+play experience by using your own router instead of the ISP supplied one, and using DDNS.
At least, I did.
No. You are skipping DNS.
I didn’t skip it, I installed ddclient.
Cloudflare is the devil!
Not entirely. CF can protect you from DDOS of up to a few millions of calls per minute. Your home router would melt with that traffic. They also act as a firewall if you enable the proxy dns feature. They do a sanity check before forwarding the call. Also a home router cannot do this. And there’s more.
Sure, cloudflare provides other security benefits; but that’s not what OP was talking about. They just wanted/liked the plug+play aspect, which doesn’t need cloudflare.
Those ‘benefits’ are also really not necessary for the vast majority of self hosters. What are you hosting, from your home, that garners that kind of attention?
The only things I host from home are private services for myself or a very limited group; which, as far as ‘attacks’ goes, just gets the occasional script kiddy looking for exposed endpoints. Nothing that needs mitigation.
@f2sfljLhdtTZ @Darkassassin07 Eveyone so worried about DDoS. They are not going to DDoS a resedential Ip address. Sure if youbpiss someone off they well they’re going to do it even without selfhosting anything.
Both your ISP and CF will drop you like a hot potato if you’re ever under that kind of attack.
CF has other features that are nice like, like WAF, bot detection, geo blocking, caching etc. But it’s only a taste.
All their real services are paid and the whole reason they offer a free tier is to upsell you to their paid services.
@lemmyvore @f2sfljLhdtTZ You can geoock without CloudFlare.
Yes, but it does expose your own IP address and thus where you live. Tunnels don’t.
@qaz @Darkassassin07 what are you even saying? Ip address doesn’t expose where you live. And better get off the internet right now if your concern is exposing your ip cause it was never secret to begin with.
Tunnels stop you from opening a port so nothing is exposed openly to the internet but it does not keep your ip private.Ip address doesn’t expose where you live.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=geoip+lookup
Tunnels stop you from opening a port so nothing is exposed openly to the internet1 but it does not keep your ip private2.
This is also incorrect.
- The entire purpose of CF tunnels is to expose sites on the internet
- CF tunnels (and services like it e.g. ngrok) rely on shared proxy servers that forward traffic based on HTTP host headers (which is why you can’t forward arbitrary TCP traffic). The IP of the site will therefore have the shared IP of the company’s proxy server instead of your own.
How do you imagine that geoblocking content works if IP addresses don’t expose where you live?
And better get off the internet right now if your concern is exposing your ip cause it was never secret to begin with.
qaz could be using any of dozens of different methods to obfuscate their IP from the wider internet to write their comment, Tor or a VPN to name just a couple.
Your IP changes all the time, it doesn’t matter. The best someone can deduct from your IP is the country.
This is false. Some ISP’s change IP’s often, but some don’t and geoip lookups can be really accurate. My IP has remained the same since I moved in, and a geoip lookup results in a coordinate less than a kilometer away. It does matter.
I guess you live in a country with loads of spare IP addresses. Here in the UK they change every few days and IPs get rotated between all ISPs, so you can’t even deduct which ISP I’m using. And sometimes my IP is not even a mainland UK IP, but some weird shit from across the world, because Empire, lol.
When looking up my static ip, the location I get is the one of my ISP, not my address. Do you happen to live nearby some central infrastructure of your ISP? (If it seems otherwise, I’m not trying to debunk what you said - I’m just asking curious questions!)
True, but the downside of cloudflare is that they are a reverse proxy and can see all your https traffic unencrypted.
Yes, but if you host a public site it might be a better option, the content is public anyway, and you won’t get doxed if you publish something controversial. It’s a trade-off, between keeping traffic private or keeping your IP private.
Wireguard works best for private traffic, but you can’t host a public site with that.
Of course you can! Nginx and wireguard on a VPS and actual services wherever you want.
The trouble with cloudflare is that there is just one. It’s one of the best registrars out there, the only free/cheap and usable DNS host (have you seen what route53 charges per zone??). That without getting into the whole tunnels and DDoS mitigation end of things, which is nearly unique at any price point.
The problem with cloudflare is that we’re missing three other cloudflares to move to if they decide to pull evil shit.
there is just one
Well it’s cloudflare, not cloudsflare. Maybe overcasthosting, or sunblockservers…
So I need to make a VPS setup script to install bind for DNS and wireguard or openvpn and push it to gitlab/GitHub?
I am not sure what that would accomplish.
I have all that, but I still use cf for a ton of stuff.
The bigger trouble is creating a CDN has a stupidly high barrier to entry. You literally need your own data centers across the world, your own server infrastructure, the man power to manage it, etc.
You could try to host it on a cloud provider but you’d go bankrupt even quicker. Unless someone were to try to build a co-op run CDN, it’s just not gonna happen without a profit motive and a large amount of capital.
I once realized so many of my favourite businesses were cooperatives. I started thinking of what other co-ops I could start and grow. The excitement faded once I realized it would have to not be about the money.
Car making without the tracking bullshit!
Coops are still about the money. They’re about saving money by sharing resources with fellow workers/consumers, and maintaining democratic control over the company. You’re not going to get rich from a coop (without embezzlement), but you and your coowners will be cutting out the middle man. Obviously, it only makes sense for industries that you’re heavily invested in.
I mean the optimal cdn is maximally distributed to reduce load and latency right. Unfortunatly the web was not built in a manner that supports this.
Eg if we could have a single url for the same object that could be served by any server that is part of the fediverse then the fediverse itself would be an optimal cdn.
Perhaps we should take some notes from peertube. Plus more legitimate bit torrent content on the internet as a whole is hardly a bad thing make the isp’s jobs harder for places without net neutrality.
Look up Anycast when you get a chance.
I feel like something like https://www.storj.io/ is on the path to what we would want/need?
There might be some additional requirements for a true CDN to ensure data is closer to where it’s needed and in as many regions as needed though with the right amount of bandwidth. The data gets stored all over the place, but that doesn’t mean its optimal. But they do seem to claim it’s faster on their website…
Edit: For those not wanting to click, TLDR is they use excess storage around the world and make it accessible anywhere, and safe from failures. People with excess storage can join the network if they have enough storage/bandwidth and pass some tests. Their API is S3 compatible.
That’s true. The bizarre paradox of the centralization of edge infrastructure is real.
That said, the other edge-lords (haha) could offer similar functionality, but they chose not to.
It’s not the only free DNS service.
It’s only a good registrar if you don’t care about privacy and you’re ok with their selection of TLDs (selected only from registries without privacy).
The free accounts do not benefit from DDoS protection. Re-read their terms of service, they’re vague on purpose. If you were ever DDoS’ed (I don’t know who would bother btw but that’s another discussion) they’d just drop you.
You can establish the tunneling thing on your own with any VPS.
The problem with cloudflare is that we’re missing three other cloudflares to move to if they decide to pull evil shit.
You can and should diversify your services and spread them to different providers that are easy to switch. I’ve been with “all in one” providers before, they inevitably end up leveraging their convenience into all sorts of crap. But until you get burned a couple of times they look really good.
It’s not the only free DNS service.
can i get some alternatives. currently basically using cf pretty much just for dns, but would really like to switch
that looks great, thanks o/
EDIT: looks like you can only manage 1 domain before having to contact their support
Contact support and tell them how many you need and they’ll try to accommodate you. There were a lot of people abusing the service and hosting hundreds of domains so now they’re making everybody request them explicitly unfortunately. They’ve also had to suspend their .dedyn.io DDNS service indefinitely because of the abuse.
That’s why we can’t have nice things.
Please read up on DNSSEC because you will be required to turn it on for every domain you host with them.
As it is run by volunteers, they probably want to keep corporate (or domain hoarders) off their platform unless they pay.
makes sense, they support plenty of donation options, if that’s suggested/a requirement to let me transfer in more than 1 :)
It’s only a good registrar if you don’t care about privacy and you’re ok with their selection of TLDs (selected only from registries without privacy).
I wish they supported my country’s two CCTLDs but other than that I’m very happy. I would never buy any of the crazy vanity TLDs anyways.
I mostly own .com domains and two CCTLDs domains.
only free/cheap and usable DNS host
Check out desec.io als an alternative
That sure does seem to tick a lot of boxes. I’m going to check it out!
I’ve moved a couple of domains to dnssec and it’s great, simple DNS.
I am out of the loop, what’s going in with snooping?
I use their cloudflared tunnel sometimes for accessing home hosted stuff.
Because Cloudflare acts as a reverse proxy it can see everything that happens in a session.
This is also known as a man in the middle attack. But Cloudflare meds to do this in order to do it’s checks for bad actors.Now, as Cloudflare has access to the unencrypted traffic and we know that NSA is all about data vacuuming due to the Snowdn leaks we can make a tin foil hat guess whaylt goes on.
I don’t understand why Cloudflare gets bashed so much over this… EVERY CDN out there does exactly the same thing. It’s how CDN’s work. Whether it’s Akamai, AWS, Google Cloud CDN, Fastly, Microsoft Azure CDN, or some other provider, they all do the same thing. In order to operate properly they need access to unencrypted content so that they can determine how to cache it properly and serve it from those caches instead of always going back to your origin server.
My employer uses both Akamai and AWS, and we’re well aware of this fact and what it means.
Thank you!
Just note, OP, that the last part of his statement is pure speculation. The first part is technically true, which can lead to that inference, but no information has been released which corroborates it. However, that does not mean it’s not possible.
This is true. Which is why I said tinfoil hat guess.
Though those leaks showed they actually did it on a large scale. I don’t think they stopped for some arbitrary reason. Why would they? And technology developed further, surveillance is only getting easier. I’d say even without a tin-foil hat on, it’s more likely they do it than not.
Well, centralization and giving up your freedoms, letting someone else control you, is always kinda easy. Same applies to all the other big tech companies and their platforms. I’d say it applies to other aspects of life, too.
And I’d say it’s not far off from the usual setup. If you had a port forward and DynDns like lots of people have, the Dns would automatically update, you’d need to make sure the port forward is activated if you got a new router, but that’s pretty much it.
But sure. if it’s too inconvenient to put in the 5 minutes of effort it requires to set up port forwarding everytime you move, I also don’t see an alternative to tunneling. Or you’d need to pay for a VPS.
Is there a way to do reverse tunnels, or something like it, so not opening any ports at all on the network, without cloudflare?
Closest to that XP I got was generating VPN keys and distributing them to close friends, running DDNS (no-ip) on my Pi with a pivpn server and then accessing JellyFin that way.
Rent a VPS, point DNS to it, have it act as central wireguard peer and connect your server(s). Then bridge incoming traffic to server via socat or firewall rules. Done
That’s a lot of work. Thanks though.
I use cloud flare tunnel for my home server too. Are there any viable and somewhat easy alternatives?
Once configured, Tor Hidden Services also just work (you may need to use some fresh bridges in certain countries if ISPs block Tor there though). You don’t have to trust any specific third party in this case.
Wouldn’t that be slow?
Yes. Very slow. And only accessible from tor clients or tor2web/onion.to-like constructions. Which adds additional delay and errors.
There are things for which onion addresses are the right solution. This is not one of them.
It would. But it’s a good option when you have computationally heavy tasks and communication is relatively light.
Port forwards in the router + DynDns.
DynDNS? I’m not 100% sure what CF Tunnel does, but from my 2 min reading it seems that DynDNS would accomplish what OP described just as well.
Oh, it’s way more than what any dyndns can do.
It might help to read it once more then 🙂
Get a cheap VPS and set up a VPN of your choice.
Just make sure the VPS will shut down if the bandwidth is exceeded rather than giving you a big overage charge.
DNS names are restricted to your tailnet’s domain name (node-name.tailnet-name.ts.net)
I guess that’s fine for some. Not a compromise I’m willing to make though.
As soon as I can use my personal domains with tailscale funnel I’ll be switching, I like tail scale a lot
I prefer Tailscale Funnel for these kinds of things. NetBird and ZeroTier also work just fine if you don’t want to expose your services to the public.
I looked at headscale but as far as I can tell their is no active directory or SSO integration. Which is very unfortunate.
Good news, they support OIDC! Haven’t tested it myself so your mileage may vary.
Tailscale is so cool too. I’ll definitely be switching if I can ever use my own domains
Actually you can… I do that with my setup. Just point your domain to the new ip assigned by tailscale to your server. Thats all. Recently they started supporting the https certificate also… Even though it’s not needed, for internal only communication.
Are there browser plugins (or other solutions) to see if an site uses cloudflare before visting?
Do you have a VPS or server with its own IPv4 address outside your home?
If you want I can maybe help you with configuring my new tool/service to replace Cloudflare Tunnels
But it depends on how you use it also, if you want to explain that send me a reply or a private message and I can answer if I think it is possible and give you the basic configuration for it, or check out the project and its sources I posted here
Does your tool have a public repo I can take a look at?
No, no public repo, no repo at all tbh, only the public code posted at the cloud drive, but the code is fully inspectable in the drive and there are no compiled binaries (you must compile it yourself to use it)
No shade on you, dude… but if it’s not available in a public repo where people with more experience than me have the opportunity to validate and review it… then I’m really really really not interested in downloading or running it on my machine.
I have trust issues with cloudflare yes, but I also have trust issues with random zip files from strangers’ cloud drives.
I appreciate your helpful attitude anyway 🙂
