What do you guys use to expose private IP addresses to the web? I was using the npm proxy manager with Cloudflare CDN. However, it stopped working after I changed my router (I keep getting error 521). Looking for an alternative to Cloudflare cdn so I can access my media server/self-hosted services away from LAN.
(Tailscale doesn’t work for me at all)
This is what I want to achieve: https://youtu.be/c6Y6M8CdcQ0?feature=shared
I literally followed this tutorial to make it work the first time.
521 usually means they cannot reach your server properly. Was the router change due to a new ISP, and does the new ISP block port 80/443? Did you re-make all the relevant port forwarding rules? Changing CDN won’t change anything if your ports are closed/not responding as expected.
Changing to a new internet plan, so they had to replace the router. Also, I did reopen ports 80 and 443, and I tested them. They’re working. What I noticed was Cloudflare changing the
A IP address to proxied (before it was the private server IP address, I got error 522 back then. I followed the tutorial again but got 521 error).
521 = Origin server down; I.e. the port is not open and/or the IP address is incorrect all together.
522 = Origin server time out; I.e. the port might be open but no content is being sent back.
If you’re seeing 521, then Cloudflare cannot establish a connection to port 80/443 on your IP address in the A record. Bearing in mind that in order for someone from outside of your LAN (i.e CloudFlare) to have access to your services, they must be able to reach the service, so this value should be your external IP address, not an internal address. Once you have your external address keyed into the record, have someone else not in your home try to access that IP/port combination and see what happens. If they cannot access, then port forwarding is not setup or your ISP is blocking, or you’re behind some CGNAT. If they can access, then something else is at play (origin IP filtering comes to mind).
This might help, sorry if it doesn’t, but here is a link to CloudFlares 5xx error code page on error 521. If you’ve done everything in the resolution list your ISP might be actively blocking you from hosting websites, as it is generally against the ISPs ToS to do such on residential service lines. This is why I personally rent a VPS and have a wireguard VPN setup to host from the VPN, which is basically just a roll your own version of Tailscale using any VPS provider. This way you don’t need to expose anything via your ISPs router/WAN and they can’t see what you are sending or which ports you are sending on (other than the encrypted VPN traffic to your VPS of course).