[noname120]

There are some limitations such as:

– TLS termination mandatorily happens at Cloudflare (i.e. your traffic is mitm'ed). That's because this free product is meant as a gateway drug (aka a loss leader) to Cloudflare's WAF/Anti-DDOS products (which require TLS termination to happen on their side for technical reasons).

– Other TCP protocols (including SSH) require every client to run the software too. So if you were thinking about bypassing the TLS termination restriction by creating a TCP tunnel instead of an HTTP(S) tunnel you can't.

– Max 100 MB uploads for HTTP(S).

– No media servers allowed.

Otherwise it's a really good service!

[vladvasiliu]

> – TLS termination mandatorily happens at Cloudflare (i.e. your traffic is mitm'ed). That's because this free product is meant as a gateway drug (aka a loss leader) to Cloudflare's WAF/Anti-DDOS products (which require TLS termination to happen on their side for technical reasons).

But on the flip side, this allows you to have a nice certificate on your outside connection without having to fiddle with letsencrypt or whathaveyou.

[KennyBlanken]

If someone finds LetsEncrypt challenging, they don't have sufficient network andsystem administrator skills to be running a private, public-facing web server. They should be running tailscale.

[vladvasiliu]

Well, one of the "challenges" is the one in a different comment: most registrars don't allow fine-grained control over who can update what DNS records.

Can it be done? Sure. But do I want to spend money on this for my home lab if I can work around it? Not a chance.

I'm kinda sensitive to the "MITM as a service" argument, but for my use case, it's not a problem.

[kuschku]

> Well, one of the "challenges" is the one in a different comment: most registrars don't allow fine-grained control over who can update what DNS records.

Afaik, every major registrar allows you to add an NS record for the _acme-challenge subdomain, allowing you to put the _acme-challenge subdomain on a custom, self-hosted DNS server.

That in turn allows you to make the permissions as specific as you'd like. Personally I just run powerdns in docker for this.

[TheNewsIsHere]

Using CNAME delegation for the ACME challenge domain and directing that to a Route 53 zone is my preferred approach. Then (as long as you have CloudWatch configured) you get inherent auditing and very flexible privilege management.

[cj]

That wouldn't work for this use case though would it? AWS doesn't allow downloading the certificate (I could be wrong)? Typically certificates can only be used with other AWS services. E.g. you can't download the certificate and serve it from a home server.

[attentive]

there is also https://github.com/joohoi/acme-dns and LE clients like lego supporting it.

[skinner927]

You don’t need automated DNS fiddling for lets encrypt. Certbot can either hook into Apache or NGINX, or run its own standalone server for verification.

[gunapologist99]

Aside from sibling comment, you also need automated DNS fiddling if you want CloudFlare Strict TLS support, because if LE can only connect to CF proxy, it will never issue via HTTPS.

[jsheard]

You don't necessarily need to do that, Cloudflare can generate you a long-lived certificate to install on your origin server which isn't publicly trusted but is trusted by their proxies, so it works with Strict TLS. YMMV with other CDNs though, you might need to fall back to using LE with a DNS challenge in some cases.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/ssl/origin-configuration/o...

[Arrowmaster]

Not true. I have a CF rule that matches . well-known/acme-challenge and sets SSL off. The main setting is on full strict but the rule disables the auto redirect to https and the strict checking so an acme client behind a CF tunnel can bootstrap a cert with the HTTP-01 method.

[jsheard]

You do need DNS fiddling if you want a wildcard cert, LE only accepts DNS challenges for those.

[PokestarFan]

Certbot has a Cloudflare extension so all you need to do is provide a credentials file and it will automatically apply everything. I have a monthly cronjob running that runs the cloudflare certbot in Docker.

[pnutjam]

I've had excellent controls using NearlyFreeSpeech.net for DNS (minor cost) and time4vps.com (free). Maybe very old registrars restrict DNS records..?

[janwillemb]

Parent did not say it was challenging.

I find fiddling with LE tedious because it has to be repeated too often.

[slt2021]

certbot and crontab needs to be setup just once, to solve cert problem

[Dalewyn]

HTTPS when used in the ubiquitous manner it is now always strikes me as unnecessary complexity and tedium, and reasonings like yours addressing them with even more complexity and tedium.

Whatever happened to KISS?

[darkwater]

It happened that the last S changed from "stupid" to "secure". If I use HTTPS I can safely enough connect to my home services through an open cafe Wifi, for example

[wibblewobble125]

I’ve been using caddy for a year which does everything for you. Basically nginx/haproxy but with https built-in via LE, no fiddling about with cert files and brittle LE scripts, also supports subdomains equally easily.

[jgalt212]

so public server via http only then?

[immibis]

The point of TLS is to prevent your traffic getting MITMed. This benefit disappears if you have to let someone MITM your traffic to get TLS.

[LoganDark]

This depends. The point of TLS is to protect your application from hostile networks. Cloudflare hasn't proven hostile yet.

[coda_]

They do allow ssh via a web browser. It may be a "beta" feature, but it doesn't require the client to run anything.

[e12e]

Requires your client to run a web browser though? That's a lot different from just an ssh client?

[RockRobotRock]

Not a web browser, the client has to install cloudflared to connect. It's pretty much exactly the Tailscale feature, but clunkier.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections...

[mortos]

GP was saying the client would require a web browser. The server of course needs cloudflared.

That said, personally I don't really have any devices that can use SSH but not a browser.

[RockRobotRock]

My past comment is wrong but you do need to install cloudflared on the client if you want to SSH without a browser.

Read the docs, you can do it either way.

[tarasglek]

I found it easier to use ssh over websocat over cloudflared. Then you just need websocat again on clientside and can use regular ssh client with it

[nottorp]

> I don't really have any devices that can use SSH but not a browser.

No headless boxes?

[mortos]

Just seeing this. Yeah, you're technically right. But I never sit at my headless boxes. I SSH to them and then from there could SSH Jump if I really needed to use SSH out of those boxes.

Also I wouldn't use Cloudflare Tunnels so this is a moot point.

[thousand_nights]

Some good points, thanks.

FWIW, I have been using it with Plex (just two users, me and my parents) and haven't gotten banned. The ToS are kind of unclear on whether this is allowed if I have to be honest.

[jsheard]

Video streaming in general is one of their red lines, you're not supposed to shove any kind of video through their CDN unless the origin is another Cloudflare product (e.g. CF Stream or R2).

[thousand_nights]

From the discussions I've read, it's not as clear cut, e.g.:

https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/152wfdh/can_i_use_a_c...

[jsheard]

It rarely is clear cut with Cloudflare, many of their policies are ambiguous so you never really know if you're stepping over the line until you get an email from sales asking you to either cut it out, start paying, or pay more. Others experience might give you a rough idea of what they'll tolerate, but since none of it is in writing they can change their minds on a whim.

[cj]

As I've painfully learned, Cloudflare's "free bandwidth" is only free until a point.

Cloudflare threatened to terminate our $15k enterprise license last week for serving 76 TB of API JSON files last month (90% cache hits).

I moved half of the traffic to a new domain with a Business license to see what they say...

[jgrahamc]

My email is [e-mail]. You can email me about this.

[password4321]

Just don't show up on some motivated salesperson's prospects report.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40481808#40482405

[12345hn6789]

FWIW that thread looks to be a casino being black listed after trying to negotiate down cloud flares enterprise plan.

[gunapologist99]

Agreed with sibling, but TBH if you're just using it for personal streaming, it's not likely to trip any bandwidth alerts on a free account, and CF will probably be happy that you're using it for personal stuff (because you'll probably take it with you to your day job too)

[DreamFlasher]

At which point is the MITM happening? What I mean is: browser → Cloudflare server → cloudflared on my server → web service. Is TLS only from browser to Cloudflare server, or is it browser to cloudflared?

[RockRobotRock]

>Is TLS only from browser to Cloudflare server, or is it browser to cloudflared?

It's encrypted between the browser and Cloudflare, but you can also create a cert and encrypt between Cloudflare and your origin server. (but that isn't mandatory)