lan-tunnel

🖇Library for exposing server from local network to the internet.

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