Accessing Home Network Resources with a Cloudflare Tunnel

I have plans to eventually set up a VPN to access my home network, but in the meantime, I opted to set up a Cloudflare Tunnel to access certain local resources. I also just wanted to play around with Cloudflare Tunnel which is part of their Zero Trust platform. One might also want to do this if they're behind a CGNAT and can't VPN into their home network.

In order for any of this to work, you first you need a domain and an existing home server with some resource you want to access. Each service will have it's own subdomain, so you'll have URL something like nextcloud.example.com or homeassistant.example.com so you can access that specific service.

If you haven't done so already, set up an account with Cloudfare. Then click "Add a domain" and follow the steps to get your domain added. I went with Cloudflare's free tier, which is adequate for my needs. You also need to use Cloudflare as your nameservers, so it's important to note that you can't have any other nameservers associated with the domain. Registrars can take up to 24 hours to process nameserver changes, but mine only took a few minutes. Once completed, you'll receive an email.

After the domain is configured, click on "Zero Trust" in the sidebar. In the "Zero Trust Overview" sidebar, expand "Networks" and select "Tunnels".

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