Like most people (OK, maybe not most…), I have a range of locally hosted services that I like to access remotely. Because of the joy that is IPv4 depletion (long live IPv6) I’m forced to use different ports for internet access, which is hard to remember and annoying to set up. And because the internet is a bad place, I prefer to use encryption where possible to keep everything safe on it’s journey across the internet. Sure, something like SSH tunnels would work, but that would still require remembering the different port numbers, and isn’t compatible with all devices (such as mobile clients).
Enter SNI Proxy
After some research, I decided to put an end to both these problems, with an install of SNI Proxy. SNI Proxy is a generic HTTP and TLS proxy that identifies the internal host from TLS’ server name indication (SNI). This allows it to seamlessly proxy multiple services on the same port, and heavily increase the WAF for services like https://coffeemachine.jacobmansfield.co.uk and https://photos.jacobmansfield.co.uk . It also makes a nice place to centrally manage SSL certificates and Let’s Encrypt renewals I was under the impression that SNI Proxy could also terminate an HTTPS/TLS connection, though this now appears to be incorrect. (Though I do this on each host, as SNI Proxy doesn’t handle my IPv6 traffic). So, let’s get installing.