I wanna share some insights with you all because lots of us think we need a dedicated server to run things like faucets, wallets, casinos, and more.... But guess what, there’s a nifty way to do it.
You really just need a regular computer or even a raspberry pi.
So, when we hook up to our modem, we're actually on a local network (LAN), and our devices aren’t visible to everyone. If you visit a site like https://whatismyipaddress.com/, you’ll see your public IP, and if you check what device is associated with that IP, it’s just your modem. The old-school method for turning your local PC into a server involved these steps:
1. Access your modem settings
2. Disable your firewall
3. Set your PC as the DMZ device
4. Use a service like NoIP to assign a domain (especially handy if your IP isn’t static)
The catch? Security risks. Disabling your firewall is a terrible move for so many reasons. The last time I did that, I was hit with around 30 attacks a minute on my server, mainly brute-force attempts on SSH and FTP.
Now, we’ve got better options that don’t involve dropping your firewall or messing with DMZ settings. Enter this tool called NGROK.
1. Start your program/service, like JSnode on port 3500
2. Run ngrok config add-authtoken <TOKEN>
3. Fire up ngrok with ngrok http http://localhost:3500
And voilà, you’ll get a link like: https://84c5df47465423.ngrok-free.dev
Pretty sweet that it comes with SSL, huh?
This way, anyone can turn a private service into a public one, and it works for any protocol. Hope this helps out the devs in our community.
you sign different papers on agreement with provider when order static ip than ones you have to sign for a regular connection. This means some of those who use your stuff will be banned dude.
ngrok seems to be a reverse proxy, and while I've never heard of that one before, I do know that if it's anything like Cloudflare then you should get the IP address from them and your real IP be hidden.
You shouldn't rely on ngrok for anything important. Maybe make a fun page for you and your colleges, but for production, this would be a nightmare.
Forget about security. It's problematic in terms of performance. If a few dozens of clients start connecting with your machine, it will quickly become slower and might even stop operating. You'll have to upgrade to a paid plan. So why not paying for shared or dedicated hosting instead?
Good for a small private thing, not good for a 'real' service.
You should always use right tool for the job, trying to run a service behind a proxy like this while useful will never be anywhere close to as good as running something on a dedicated platform somewhere.
And, as @alexeyneu pointed out a lot of providers have clauses about you running things like servers on their networks unless you pay for a better plan.
-Dave
You cant be serious?
Dont get me wrong, I appreciate you trying to help by sharing information, but we should be careful not to mislead folks. A Raspberry Pi has its place as a neat little device to tinker with, but comparing it to a serious server for financial services would be quite a stretch. Its like putting a tricycle up against a monster truck! Sure, maybe a Pi could limp along for a super small startup. But real servers bring some heavyweight power - tons more muscle for data crunching, much needed security features, and near 100% uptime and that matters hugely for anything handling money or private customer data.
Now could a Pi be a decent way for an absolute beginner to get their feet wet in basic website hosting? Certainly, why not. But for any real, mission-critical operation you need to roll in a hardcore server, with all its bells and whistles. These things exist for a reason!
Not near a small startup. Not even in table for discussion. Running web server in a Raspberry Pi makes sense only if you'll be its only user. For example, if you're running a smart home, or connecting to a Bitcoin or Lightning node when you're not in home. And even then, when you're the only user, it might still have connectivity issues due to insufficient resources.
If you're a beginner, just rent a VPS or shared web hosting.
Why would you take down your firewall? Anyone who have tried renting VPS or server know it's very common occurrence. Besides, you can configure your firewall to only accept connection from certain port or IP address.