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?
I’m not sure if I’m understanding this one. But assuming that you’re hosting your own server and you work away from home and want to connect in on the weekends. If you have https forced and it’s also on in the app you’re using to connect, any traffic between your end and the server is automatically encrypted. The only thing your ISP is going to see are data packets going from you to your server back and forth. Same if you’re hosting for 10 users. All of VPN does is give you another point hop between the server and your client. Vpns are useful if you’re trying to to block your ISP from seeing that you connect to a certain site on the internet. But just logging in remotely to your server it’s absolutely useless.