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VPN and port forwarding
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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I use airVPN and I've been very pleased with it. Can also pay month to month, as I only use it to torrent. I don't use port forwarding. My question is - can you use a VPS for what you need?
I am not very knowledgable about vps and how that could be something I can use. To be frank, I dont have any particular need for a VPN other than torrenting and bypassing geographical restriction in a general way. The jellyfin experiment was to just be able to share my media across the web, so that people I know can access my media, music, mostly. Even the selection of a VPN isnt that urgent as I have a shared seedbox with seedbox.eu so that I can download torrents safely. Since I have been using a VPN for some years now, I thought id keep one handy, and when I was reading up about port forwarding, I thought maybe that could be useful, for jellyfin and such.
Look into a VPS. I use a few to host web apps & apis for personal/business use. You can use it as a server to host media files to yourself. And since you have full access to the OS, you can do whatever port forwarding you like.
Plus they're super cheap. I pay like $4 a month for the cheapest and $15 a month for the most expensive. The cheapest is like only 750mb RAM.. but for simple things you don't need much at all
That is something I would like to look into in the future, but since you are knowledgeable with regards to VPS, can I ask you why the RAM figures are more important than the storage figures, in the few services I checked out, and the example you gave, the RAM value is what is prominently mentioned, if the purpose is to store media and such, doesnt the storage capacity take precedence, like in a seedbox?
You can use it for ssh port forwarding, or even just use it to host a vpn.
I also host VPS for lots of things. However, I don't think that's what you want here. I think you are really looking for two separate things. VPN for torrenting and bypassing geographic restrictions. Spot on. Go with a cheap VPN that allows torrenting and have fun.
Now, you want to do the media sharing thing with Jellyfin. Using a commercial VPN doesn't help here. It's only protecting you from giving your IP address to people you share Jellyfin with. But, if you trust them to share a service from your local network, you should probably trust them with your IP. Puting it on a VPN still leaves your Jellyfin exposed on the open internet where anyone can try to break in. It's just not your local IP. Does that make sense?
Because of the above, I would say to port forward on your home internet instead. However, I don't suggest this either! Even if you are super knowledgeable, it's best to not expose anything to the internet unless you have to. Jellyfin is pretty safe, but the best thing would be to use you want a VPN. So, I am a little confusing haha! Separate to the commercial VPN in the first part, you should setup a VPN where your network is the private network. I would highly suggest Wireguard. You can do all the setup and it's a little overwhelming. Or you can try Tailscale which uses Wireguard but it does all of the configuration for you. It is a paid product but for your needs I highly doubt you would fall out of the free plan.
https://www.ethanmad.com/post/jellyfin_remote_access/
You don't need to do the reverse proxy part of that either btw.
https://tailscale.com/kb/1084/sharing
That'll show you how to share with family/friends
Thats really helpful, I think I am going to try this out. The whole VPN and port forwarding feature I was curious about happened because my ISP doesnt allow port forwarding and I was unable to set it up for sharing my jellyfin. I will try to read the link you shared and try what I can do! Thanks a lot!
Let me know if you figure it out!