Recommendations for Home/Self-Hosting Reverse Proxy Easier to Learn than Traefik?

Networking Networking Software
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Hello,

I’m about to embark on trying to self-host some services, some of which will be accessible publicly.

I’m planning to use a reverse proxy, and have previous experience with NGINX Proxy Manager to manage self-hosted domains and associated Let’s Encrypt certs ( https://nginxproxymanager.com/ ).

I’d be happy to use it again, but it’s missing some features I’m interested in, primarily:

  1. Bandwidth monitoring per host (that is, how much bandwidth up/down is my Ghost blog VM using through its associated public-facing domain?); and
  2. Bandwidth throttling (I want to control how much of my upstream bandwidth each service can use).

Maybe the reverse proxy isn’t the best place to do those things; I’m not sure.

I’m aware of HAProxy and Caddy and some others, but I have no experience with them. I’m a hobbyist that just wants to self-host a few services. Traefik is too complex for my needs and the learning curve is steeper than I can deal with right now.

I’d really appreciate some advice. Thanks!

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I’ve used caddy to great success in the past. Super easy to set up. I don’t know much about bandwidth management, but I’d start at my router for something like that.

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Thanks for the rec. I’ll check out some YouTube videos. :slight_smile:

I was hoping for bandwidth management integrated into the reverse proxy so that I could get it all set up there in a VM or LXC and have it continue to work as configured even if I have to switch out the router at 3AM or something (notwithstanding firewall rules on the router, of course).

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NGINX Proxy Manager

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I’ve used NPM before and love it, but was interested in what other options might exist. It’s been a few years.

I’m going to try Traefik again just to see if it’s any easier to set up now that I have a better idea what I’m doing, but odds are I’ll be on NPM again shortly. It really is the best IMHO as far as just getting up and going.

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Forgive me, somehow despite being clearly stated in your OP, I completely missed that. I really don’t know how

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PfSense has HAProxy built in and I have been using for a few years now.

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No need to apologize. I love NPM and will end up back there if I can’t get Traefik or haproxy to work.

Traefik has features I’d be interested in using, but is much more complex than NPM. I’m going to try setting it up this weekend but I’m not going to waste my time if I can’t get it to work.

haproxy has a plugin for my firewall, which would simplify things dramatically if I used it. Maybe. I don’t know how hard haproxy is to use, but I like the idea of my reverse proxy being up whenever my firewall is working (or, my reverse proxy being up whenever the network is exposed to the internet).

I’ve got some decisions to make. :stuck_out_tongue:

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It’s great that you’re venturing into self-hosting services! Considering your requirements, I’d recommend looking into Caddy. It’s user-friendly and more straightforward compared to Traefik, making it a good fit for hobbyists. While it may not have all the advanced features you mentioned out of the box, it’s highly extensible through plugins, so you can potentially find or create plugins to meet your specific needs.