(I asked this on r*ddit a long while ago, but I don’t think I explained myself properly)
Basically, I would like to host a few services on my own metal (and not anywhere else in the world!) to play around with and learn, like my personal site, lemmy instance, vpn, fdroid, image host, etc etc.
I would also like to hide my public IP address because I don’t want people who connect to me to know my location (even if it’s rather coarse).
I know that this isn’t possible without at least another server in a different physical location, but I really have no idea how to approach this. What software do I run? What is this action called? What do any of these AWS/Azure service names mean? How much would I realistically need to pay? Etc etc.
Anyone have any pointers?
Look into getting a VPS to proxy things through using either wireguard+DNAT, rathole or SSH tunneling.
Check into Cloudflare Tunnels.
Cloudflare tunnels are great but OP may not want to have to authenticate each user to their services.
As others have pointed out,
- a VPN (so that your outbound traffic comes from your VPN endpoint, not your bare IP address)
- a reverse proxy server
I use a router from GL-iNet to run the always-on VPN, and
rathole
for a reverse proxy. Both the VPN and the reverse proxy terminate at $4/mo VPSes.Cloudflare DNS Proxy sounds like exactly what you’re looking for, where cloudflare acts as the DNS middleman and responds with their own IPs, while forwarding all traffic for the site(s) to your public IP space