[macsj200]

So how exactly does the tunneling service work? Is it something like LogMeIn Hamachi? From what I understand, you need an intermediary server between two nodes in the network to create a connection like this. So do you have to pay hosting costs to create this pipeline?

[inconshreveable]

Yes that's correct, ngrok hosts servers around the world that serve as 'relays' which accept connections on your behalf and then copy the bytes through to a persistent connection initiated by the ngrok client. It's the same principle as a reverse SSH tunnel