A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
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What’s your go too (secure) method for casting over the internet with a Jellyfin server.
I’m wondering what to use and I’m pretty beginner at this
for me the easiest option was to set up tailscale on the server or network where jellyfin runs and then on the client/router where you want to watch the stream.
This is also what I do, however, each user creates their own tailnet, not an account on mine and I share the server to them.
This way I keep my 3 free users for me, and other people still get to see jellyfin.
Tailscale and jellyfin in docker, add server to tailnet and share it out to your users emails. They have to install tailscale client in a device, login, then connect to your jellyfin. My users use Walmart Onn $30 streaming boxes. They work great.
I struggled for a few weeks to get it all working, there's a million people saying "I use this" but never "this is how to do it". YouTube is useless because it's filled with "jellyfin vs Plex SHOWDOWN DEATH FIGHT DE GOOGLE UR TOILET".
Tailscale
I rent a cheap $5/mo VPS and use it to run a wireguard server with wgeasy and nginx proxy manager. Everything else runs on my home server connected by wireguard.
Use a reverse proxy (caddy or nginx proxy manager) with a subdomain, like myservice.mydomain.com (maybe even configure a subdir too, so …domain.com/guessthis/). Don’t put anything on the main domain / root dir / the IP address.
If you’re still unsure setup Knockd to whitelist only IP addresses that touch certain one or two random ports first.
So security through obscurity :) But good luck for the bots to figure all that out.
VPN is of course the actually secure option, I’d vote for Tailscale.
I access it through a reverse proxy (nginx). I guess the only weak point is if someone finds out the domain for it and starts spamming the login screen. But I've restricted access to the domain for most of the world anyway. Wireguard would probably be more secure but its not always possible if like on vacation and want to use it on the TV there..
If you’re a beginner and you’re looking for the most secure way with least amount of effort, just VPN into your home network using something like WireGuard, or use an off the shelf mesh vpn like Tailscale to connect directly to your JF server. You can give access to your VPN to other people to use. Tailscale would be the easiest to do this with, but if you want to go full self-hosted you can do it with WireGuard if you’re willing to put in a little extra leg work.
What I’ve done in the past is run a reverse proxy on a cloud VPS and tunnel that to the JF server. The cloud VPS acts as a reverse proxy and a web application firewall which blocks common exploits, failed connection attempts etc. you can take it one step beyond that if you want people to authenticate BEFORE they reach your server by using an oauth provider and whatever forward Auth your reverse proxy software supports.
Wireguard vpn into my home router. Works on android so fire sticks etc can run the client.
We have it open to the public, behind a load balancer URL filtering incomming connection, https proxied through cloudflare with a country filter in place
If it’s just so you personally can access it away from home, use tailscale. Less risky than running a publicly exposed server.
Tailscale, with nginx for https.
Very easy, very simple, just works, and i can share my jellyfin server with my friends
I just install tailscale at family houses. The limit is 100 machines.
I use a wire guard tunnel into my Fritz box and from there I just log in because I'm in my local network.
Cloudflare. No public exposure to the internet.
Are we not worried about their terms of service? I've been using pangolin
Over the top for security would be to setup a personal VPN and only watch it over the VPN. If you are enabling other users and you don't want them on your network; using a proxy like nginx is the way.
Being new to this I would look into how to set these things up in docker using docker-compose.