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> I'm not sure there's a single class of software that's been implemented more times than ngrok-style tunneling. I keep finding more and more. AFAIK ngrok was

> I'm not sure there's a single class of software that's been implemented more times than ngrok-style tunneling. I keep finding more and more. AFAIK ngrok was the first widespread implementation of it, and there was such a sheer lack of it before that everyone started working on their own implementations at once and now we have an abundance. (At least that's my personal theory.)

kelnos 3y ago
I think "widespread" in this case means "marketed better". There were open source implementations before ngrok, whose founder even worked with someone who'd written one of those. (ngrok back then was certainly better than a lot of those other options, though.) Webhooks created the need for local tunneling software. Before ngrok, webhooks themselves were just starting to become more common. The need for local tunneling is much much greater than it was 15 years ago. (Also consider that ngrok today is far more then a local tunnel proxy. They noticed the abundance of open source options years ago and have moved on from the basic concept.)
- apitman 3y ago
  It's an interesting market. Currently most (all?) offerings are targeted at the developer case, a la webhooks and request inspection. But I think in the future the more important use case (and much larger market) will be self hosting. That's going to require a lot more bandwidth.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > I think "widespread" in this case means "marketed better". No, widespread means widespread. As in tons of people started to use it, ngrok started pivoting into enterprise, moved from ngrok.io to ngrok.com, etc. I was there for all of it. The landscape of software other than ngrok was a total wasteland. Maybe there was localtunnel or SSH, I guess. But both of them kind of sucked and were fragile. ngrok was a static Go binary you could run anywhere to open a tunnel and it was total magic, worked perfectly, and was exactly what the world needed. It was the original. It taught people how this stuff ought to work and once people learned the formula, just like the iPhone, everyone else started copying it and now there are tons of implementations.
CoffeeOnWrite 3y ago
Before ngrok we set it up in 15 minutes by configuring ssh and nginx a la https://gist.github.com/gdamjan/4586758 https://gist.github.com/gdamjan/4586758

kelnos 3y ago

I think "widespread" in this case means "marketed better". There were open source implementations before ngrok, whose founder even worked with someone who'd written one of those. (ngrok back then was certainly better than a lot of those other options, though.) Webhooks created the need for local tunneling software. Before ngrok, webhooks themselves were just starting to become more common. The need for local tunneling is much much greater than it was 15 years ago. (Also consider that ngrok today is far more then a local tunnel proxy. They noticed the abundance of open source options years ago and have moved on from the basic concept.)

apitman 3y ago
It's an interesting market. Currently most (all?) offerings are targeted at the developer case, a la webhooks and request inspection. But I think in the future the more important use case (and much larger market) will be self hosting. That's going to require a lot more bandwidth.
LoganDark 3y ago
> I think "widespread" in this case means "marketed better". No, widespread means widespread. As in tons of people started to use it, ngrok started pivoting into enterprise, moved from ngrok.io to ngrok.com, etc. I was there for all of it. The landscape of software other than ngrok was a total wasteland. Maybe there was localtunnel or SSH, I guess. But both of them kind of sucked and were fragile. ngrok was a static Go binary you could run anywhere to open a tunnel and it was total magic, worked perfectly, and was exactly what the world needed. It was the original. It taught people how this stuff ought to work and once people learned the formula, just like the iPhone, everyone else started copying it and now there are tons of implementations.

CoffeeOnWrite 3y ago

Before ngrok we set it up in 15 minutes by configuring ssh and nginx a la https://gist.github.com/gdamjan/4586758 https://gist.github.com/gdamjan/4586758