lan-tunnel
Why
When you need to access your raspberry pi or a automation hub from the internet, but port forwarding or public IP is not an option.
How it works
Consists of two parts:
-
Proxy server
Forwards incoming internet requests through a tunnel to your LAN.
Needs to be run on your own server accessible from the internet, VPS or something like heroku. -
Client
Is run from within your LAN.
It serves as a glue between your app and the proxy by opening a pool of keep-alive sockets connection both and passes
Can be a part of your app or a separate process.
Your app (web server) doesn't need to change. It just responds to its usual port.
TL;DR
PROXY SERVER TUNNEL LAN APP
available on internet exposes the app inaccessible from internet
at https://you.com:80 through tunnelPort at http://localhost:80
| |
| | Your app connects to proxy
| <----------------------- | and opens keep-alive tunnel
| | sockets for handling requests
| |
GET request | |
you.com/index.html | pass request to app |
------------------> | localhost/index.html |
| -----------------------> |
| | Your app serves /index.html
proxy serves | pass /index.html back |
/index.html | <----------------------- |
<------------------ | |
| |Installation
npm install lan-tunnel
Usage
Check out the extended example.
Proxy server running on the remote machine
import {createProxyServer} from 'lan-tunnel'
createProxyServer({
// Port where you can access the app from internet
proxyPort: 80,
// Internal port for communicating between the proxy and your local app
tunnelPort: 8010,
// OPTIONAL: Certificate to make the server HTTPS instead of simple HTTP.
key: fs.readFileSync('../../ssl.key'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('../../ssl.cert'),
// OPTIONAL: Encryption of TCP tunnels
tunnelEncryption: {
key: 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEF',
iv: '1234567890123456',
cipher: 'aes-256-ctr',
},
})Client side running in your local network
import {exposeThroughProxy} from 'lan-tunnel'
// Include this in your app, or run separately
exposeThroughProxy({
// The internet proxy server at which the app will be exposed
proxyHost: 'your-proxy-server.com',
proxyPort: 80,
tunnelPort: 8010,
// Your app
appPort: 8080
// OPTIONAL: Encryption of TCP tunnels
tunnelEncryption: {...}
})
// your typical web server listening on the appPort.
const app = express()
app.listen(8080)Client code can also run standalone on a different machine if you define appHost.
License
MIT, Mike Kovařík, Mutiny.cz