Does anyone have any advice on hosting a server to the outside world? I intend to host a Jellyfin media server and want to be able to access it remotely. I was leaning towards hosting a VPN on my network with a good password but I don’t know much about that. I am looking for a free option that ideally doesn’t require proprietary software and can be completely hosted locally. For reasons that I won’t go into, I am a little concerned about my isp seeing the traffic to the media server. I know I am being paranoid but I don’t really care. I imagine if I host it through port forwarding on the router but set up HTTPS that would encrypt the traffic and stop my ISP from seeing it, but I don’t know if hosting a VPN would be easier / more secure. Thoughts?
And this works even with a dynamic/non-static IP? I thought there was more hassle involved :D
No, if you don’t have a static IP, you will need to use a dynamic DNS solution.
You might also investigate ipv6 if your ISP provides it. Often, if they don’t give you a static ipv4 address, they might assign you a static block of ipv6 addresses you can use. That makes a big assumption that you can always use ipv6 though!