Are you forwarding tons of ports on your home network? Well, you shouldn’t be. It’s a risk to simply forward one port, let alone dozens. You should use Cloudflare Tunnels or Tailscale instead. Here’s why.
Port forwarding seems like the easiest solution for external access
But it also carries the greatest risk.
If you are trying to host a website or service at home and want to access it outside of your network, then forward a port It seems like the simplest solution at first. It’s easy to do, is natively supported by most routers, and only takes a second or two to set up. What harm could there be?
There is actually a lot of potential harm that could come from port forwarding. Some people do port forwarding for years, if not decades, without any harm to their network. Others can be hacked within days of opening their ports. It’s quite a guessing game you’ll be in.
When you forward ports, you are opening parts of your network for someone outside the network to access. That’s the point, right? Well, if you don’t properly secure the services in your home or your router, there’s a chance that a bad actor could use that forwarded port in a nefarious way.
The most secure network has no open ports to the outside world and leaves it at that. However, sometimes you really need access to services (or servers) when you’re not at home, so what do you do? Well, that’s where unique tools like Tailscale and Cloudflare Tunnels come in.
Tailscale offers external access without security risks
Although it is not the same as port forwarding.
The safest way to access your network is with a VPN platform like Tailscale. While traditional VPN protocols like WireGuard or OpenVPN still require port forwarding to work, The queue scale is different.
Tailscale offers a unique approach. Install the Tailscale client on your device (like a laptop) and on the server. Then, every time you want to connect the two devices, it goes through Tailscale’s cloud network to make the connection possible.
This doesn’t require port forwarding as everything happens in the cloud, and is a great solution if you want private access to your home network. Technically, Tailscale is more of a VPN than anything else.
The problem with Tailscale is that you must have an account and there isn’t really a way to limit access to that account. By default, granting an account access to a Tailscale server gives them broad access to that machine, which means you have to set up complex access control lists (ACLs) if you want to restrict them to a single website.
So, if you’re trying to host a website for your personal microblog, Tailscale won’t work. Google will not be able to access the website and is simply better as a private way to share server access, or simply as a way to you to access your own servers outside your house.
Cloudflare Tunnels lets you host websites yourself without port forwarding
It is the best solution if you cannot forward ports on your router
If your goal is not necessarily to access your entire network outside your home, but simply to access one or two websites, Cloudflare Tunnels could be the perfect solution. Basically, Cloudflare Tunnels works the same way as Tailscale.
You install the Cloudflare Tunnels client on your server and then link it to a domain on Cloudflare. From there, you will be able to configure the IP address of the local system, as well as the port of that system to which you want to forward a domain.
With Cloudflare Tunnels, you can create myawesomedomain.com on your server at 192.168.0.54 on port 80. Then, simply plug those numbers (IP address and port) into Cloudflare Tunnel, and when someone goes to myawesomedomain.com, it will route it internally for you.
Cloudflare Tunnels replace more than just port forwarding, also replaces your reverse proxy. Therefore, you can handle all your domain setup within the Cloudflare interface, including SSL generation.
While Tailscale allows you to SSH into a server or access LAN IPs, Cloudflare Tunnels is a way to allow everyone to access your website. This means that Google can successfully crawl the website and no one needs a user account to access it.
For hosting a website, service, or anything else you want people outside your home to have access to, Cloudflare Tunnels is the best solution outside of port forwarding. Just be sure to read the license agreement, because Cloudflare specifically prohibits running services like Jellyfin and Plex through Cloudflare Tunnels.
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- Brand
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GEEKOM
- UPC
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AMD Ryzen 5 7545U
- Graphics
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AMD Radeon 740M
- Memory
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16 GB
- Storage
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500GB
- Operating system
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Windows 11 Pro
The GEEKOM A7 mini PC 2026 update comes with many interesting features. For starters, it comes with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed and activated. There’s also a 40Gb/s USB4 port on the back, along with built-in 2.5 Gigabit networking. If we add to this the ultra-compact size and the large number of ports, this mini PC is ready for whatever you need.
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- Brand
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Ugreen
- Memory
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8 GB (upgradable to 64 GB)
- Drive bays
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2x 3.5 inch, 2x M.2 NVMe
- LAN ports
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10GbE
The Ugreen DXP2800 GT NAS is the perfect starter system for anyone looking to get started with working from home. With two 3.5-inch drive bays and two NVMe slots, this NAS also supports user-upgradeable RAM and has 10-gigabit networking.
Just because something is the standard doesn’t mean it’s the best.
Port forwarding has always been the traditional way to open your network to external access and it works great for that. The problem is that it is simply not the best solution in all scenarios.
Sometimes, it’s your only option. For example, Cloudflare’s terms of service prohibit routing heavy media streams like Plex or Jellyfin through their tunnels, although Tailscale is still a great private alternative for that. However, in cases where you can use something besides port forwarding, it’s definitely the best case to do it. It is simply safer to leave ports on your network closed.
