6 ms·

Finch – local port forwarding

126 points by lachgr 12y ago

keeran 12y ago
Looks like http://proxylocal.com/ http://proxylocal.com/ (and others), but implemented in Node.js ? Would be interesting to see a chart & timeline of similar services and products reimplemented each time a new tech comes around...
- johns 12y ago
  http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxying-landscape http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy... I guess I need to update this now.
  - sciurus 12y ago
    If you're updating it, could you note that the PageKite client and server are open source? https://pagekite.net/wiki/OpenSource/ https://pagekite.net/wiki/OpenSource/
    - johns 12y ago
      Adding now
ossreality 12y ago
The fuck? Third party software and a third party SERVER that connections go through are not even remotely necessary for this.
jrajav 12y ago
Looks pretty similar to ngrok, aside from the fact that ngrok has an unrestricted free tier. (Looks like ngrok.com is down at the moment: http://web.archive.org/web/20140504031732/https://ngrok.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140504031732/https://ngrok.com/ )
- wprater 12y ago
  ngrok is amazing and open.
  - infocollector 12y ago
    do these support sni/https correctly? Last time I checked localtunnel/ngrok, it did not. Pagekite does.
  - Flavius 12y ago
    When it's not down, like now or most of the time. :(
    - nickpresta 12y ago
      I used ngrok pretty heavily a couple months ago for a period of weeks and it never never down when I was using it. This is the first time I've ever seen ngrok (service or site) down.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  My first thought too. Ngrok's traffic inspection stuff is pretty cool, and it doesn't look like Finch has that. Vagrant Share is also a similar idea, though obviously tied to Vagrant.
  - lachgr 12y ago
    Ngrok looks cool, too. The traffic inspection tool sounds really great. It's a pity it's website is down now. If this often happens it's pricing may be good, but maybe are other services better alternatives if you can't always you Ngrok.
    - kordless 12y ago
      I know Alan and have been using Ngrok for months now. This is the first time I've noticed a seriously long outage. The site seems to be back up now, FWIW.
justincormack 12y ago
Or give everything an ipv6 address and just use DNS. Once you get accustomed to every VM and every container and every little experiment having a routeable IP address life gets easier.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  Would you happen to know of any good tutorials for this? Are you talking about using something like Docker? What exactly is your workflow? Thank you.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Allocate a /64 to any machine that runs VMs or containers. Then I tend to just run radvd which will broadcast the prefix so that hosts can auto assign; for virtual hosts letting them auto assign based on mac address is usually fine, as the mac address is random or you assign explicitly (explicit is often easiest). Its fairly simple, just get ipv6 and start using it...
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
- mixedbit 12y ago
  Getting accustomed to allowing public access to development services doesn't sound like a good idea.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    You would normally have to explicitly unfirewall any service; I run my ipv6 as inbound ssh only. Although crawling ipv6 is pretty hard compared to ipv4.
csswizardry 12y ago
I’ve been using Finch for quite a while now, and I absolutely love it. As a lot of people have pointed out, there are several alternatives and/or competitors. But, as @lachgr points out, Finch is very user-friendly, which—to a designery type like me—is invaluable.
unhammer 12y ago
How is it different from Pagekite? (Apart from requiring node.)
Mizza 12y ago
I've made the trip from localtunnel to pagekite to ngrok.. Ngrok is the greatest of all time. Being able to intercept, modify and replay is a life safer when debugging webhooks. https://ngrok.com https://ngrok.com Good there's competition though.
regularjack 12y ago
If you're using vagrant v1.5+, there's vagrant share: http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/share/ http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/share/. Requires a vagrantcloud account, free during beta: https://vagrantcloud.com/ https://vagrantcloud.com/
- lachgr 12y ago
  But that's limited to Vagrant, with services like Finch any port can be forwarded (though Vagrant Share has more options like ssh). I think it's good to see some competition in this field as these services can only become better.
- mitchellh 12y ago
  I want to jump in here and officially say that Vagrant Share in its current form will likely be free forever.
  - taternuts 12y ago
    Awesome, that's good to hear!
tvon 12y ago
FWIW, if you just want to forward a port you can run: natpmpc -a 9077 9000 tcp 36000 which will forward 9077 to 9000 for 3600 seconds.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  Mac user (or at least Airport Express)? NAT-PMP is a competitor to uPNP which is more likely to be implemented on a consumer grade router. http://v2.nat32.com/upnpc.htm http://v2.nat32.com/upnpc.htm It looks like the upnpc and natpmpc apps are in the same package though.
  - tvon 12y ago
    Yeah, I came across `natpmpc` when I discovered the Airport Express at the office does not support uPNP. Our new Asus N66U supports NAT-PMP so I thought maybe it was more common these days.
ppierald 12y ago
It's important to know that your content, intellectual property, and possibly confidential user data including full http request/responses are being proxied by this service. Their privacy policy is vague about what they will do with this information other than to say they will collect and process it: https://meetfinch.com/privacy https://meetfinch.com/privacy "In running and maintaining our website we may collect and process the following data about you: Information about your use of our site including details of your visits such as pages viewed and the resources that you access. Such information includes traffic data, location data and other communication data. Information provided voluntarily by you. For example, when you register for information or make a purchase. Information that you provide when you communicate with us by any means."
- lachgr 12y ago
  I think that all of these type of services are able to access your content. Maybe the don't do so, but unless you run this on your own server, your data is in principle accessible by the service.
  - ppierald 12y ago
    Agreed. Just want to point it out to those that jump in head first without understanding the consequences of that action. You might get fired from your job for doing this or severly reprimanded. You might unwittingly cause a production data breach for some reason you never even imagined. So it's a message of be careful and understand fully what you are doing.
motowilliams 12y ago
As yet another alternative Runscope Passageway https://www.runscope.com/docs/passageway https://www.runscope.com/docs/passageway
- johns 12y ago
  It's a crowded space :) http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxying-landscape http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy...
jschuur 12y ago
You appear to have 10 hours of traffic a month right now, while it's in beta: https://meetfinch.com/pricing https://meetfinch.com/pricing Once they roll out paid plans, their 20 hour/month plan is $15/month. And (at least based on their pricing page now) you don't get reserved subdomains until the $25/month option, so you end up getting a random URL whenever you set a site up (again).
Cieplak 12y ago
ssh -R 80:localhost:8080 ubuntu@some-ec2-instance -i key.pem
- __david__ 12y ago
  This has been my technique for a long time. I usually add -N, since there's usually no need to do anything on that host.
- itsadok 12y ago
  You'd need to tweak the server for this to actually work. By default, remote forwarded ports are not accessible from other hosts, and non-root cannot listen on port 80. http://serverfault.com/a/133440/1726 http://serverfault.com/a/133440/1726 http://serverfault.com/a/285617/1726 http://serverfault.com/a/285617/1726
justintocci 12y ago
Its crazy the data people will hand over to total strangers for the promise of a little convenience.
robobro 12y ago
The name looked familiar... then I realized, there's multiple Finches. https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Finch https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Finch
dscpls 12y ago
It would be nice to make a upnp version of this for when you're on the same network, you just don't want to mess with finding your ip
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jqm 12y ago
This looks cool but I couldn't imagine putting a development concept through someone I don't know's server.
tomrod 12y ago
Huh. And here I figured Finch was command-line pidgin. What happens when names collide in open source world?
- hyperair 12y ago
  Basically one of either outcomes happen: 1. Maintainers of both projects fight it out and one project gets renamed. Users are happy. Packagers are happy. 2. Maintainers of both projects fight it out and neither compromise. Users of both projects (intersection of the sets, rather than union) are pissed. Packagers are even more pissed, and put in an annoying and difficult situation, and forced to come out with weird hacky solutions to appease users. (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=614907 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=614907) To any of you who read this and find yourself naming a project in the future, do your users some justice and at least do some cursory Googling before settling on a name. And please don't pick annoying-to-Google names like + or * or - or _ or some other one- or two-character name.
tedchs 12y ago
Like I said for the last one of these, your own VPS or server plus 2 lines of Nginx config plus ssh -R gets you the same thing with no additional dependency. And you control the domain name.
jonalmeida 12y ago
Some of the subdomain URLs it creates are pretty hilarious. I got https://massive-boys.usefinch.com/ https://massive-boys.usefinch.com/

126 points by lachgr 12y ago

Looks like http://proxylocal.com/ http://proxylocal.com/ (and others), but implemented in Node.js ? Would be interesting to see a chart & timeline of similar services and products reimplemented each time a new tech comes around...

johns 12y ago
http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxying-landscape http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy... I guess I need to update this now.
- sciurus 12y ago
  If you're updating it, could you note that the PageKite client and server are open source? https://pagekite.net/wiki/OpenSource/ https://pagekite.net/wiki/OpenSource/
  - johns 12y ago
    Adding now

ossreality 12y ago

The fuck? Third party software and a third party SERVER that connections go through are not even remotely necessary for this.

jrajav 12y ago

Looks pretty similar to ngrok, aside from the fact that ngrok has an unrestricted free tier. (Looks like ngrok.com is down at the moment: http://web.archive.org/web/20140504031732/https://ngrok.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20140504031732/https://ngrok.com/ )

wprater 12y ago
ngrok is amazing and open.
- infocollector 12y ago
  do these support sni/https correctly? Last time I checked localtunnel/ngrok, it did not. Pagekite does.
- Flavius 12y ago
  When it's not down, like now or most of the time. :(
  - nickpresta 12y ago
    I used ngrok pretty heavily a couple months ago for a period of weeks and it never never down when I was using it. This is the first time I've ever seen ngrok (service or site) down.
bshimmin 12y ago
My first thought too. Ngrok's traffic inspection stuff is pretty cool, and it doesn't look like Finch has that. Vagrant Share is also a similar idea, though obviously tied to Vagrant.
- lachgr 12y ago
  Ngrok looks cool, too. The traffic inspection tool sounds really great. It's a pity it's website is down now. If this often happens it's pricing may be good, but maybe are other services better alternatives if you can't always you Ngrok.
  - kordless 12y ago
    I know Alan and have been using Ngrok for months now. This is the first time I've noticed a seriously long outage. The site seems to be back up now, FWIW.

justincormack 12y ago

Or give everything an ipv6 address and just use DNS. Once you get accustomed to every VM and every container and every little experiment having a routeable IP address life gets easier.

jnbiche 12y ago
Would you happen to know of any good tutorials for this? Are you talking about using something like Docker? What exactly is your workflow? Thank you.
- justincormack 12y ago
  Allocate a /64 to any machine that runs VMs or containers. Then I tend to just run radvd which will broadcast the prefix so that hosts can auto assign; for virtual hosts letting them auto assign based on mac address is usually fine, as the mac address is random or you assign explicitly (explicit is often easiest). Its fairly simple, just get ipv6 and start using it...
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
mixedbit 12y ago
Getting accustomed to allowing public access to development services doesn't sound like a good idea.
- justincormack 12y ago
  You would normally have to explicitly unfirewall any service; I run my ipv6 as inbound ssh only. Although crawling ipv6 is pretty hard compared to ipv4.

csswizardry 12y ago

I’ve been using Finch for quite a while now, and I absolutely love it. As a lot of people have pointed out, there are several alternatives and/or competitors. But, as @lachgr points out, Finch is very user-friendly, which—to a designery type like me—is invaluable.

unhammer 12y ago

How is it different from Pagekite? (Apart from requiring node.)

Mizza 12y ago

I've made the trip from localtunnel to pagekite to ngrok.. Ngrok is the greatest of all time. Being able to intercept, modify and replay is a life safer when debugging webhooks. https://ngrok.com https://ngrok.com Good there's competition though.

regularjack 12y ago

If you're using vagrant v1.5+, there's vagrant share: http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/share/ http://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/share/. Requires a vagrantcloud account, free during beta: https://vagrantcloud.com/ https://vagrantcloud.com/

lachgr 12y ago
But that's limited to Vagrant, with services like Finch any port can be forwarded (though Vagrant Share has more options like ssh). I think it's good to see some competition in this field as these services can only become better.
mitchellh 12y ago
I want to jump in here and officially say that Vagrant Share in its current form will likely be free forever.
- taternuts 12y ago
  Awesome, that's good to hear!

tvon 12y ago

FWIW, if you just want to forward a port you can run: natpmpc -a 9077 9000 tcp 36000 which will forward 9077 to 9000 for 3600 seconds.

voltagex_ 12y ago
Mac user (or at least Airport Express)? NAT-PMP is a competitor to uPNP which is more likely to be implemented on a consumer grade router. http://v2.nat32.com/upnpc.htm http://v2.nat32.com/upnpc.htm It looks like the upnpc and natpmpc apps are in the same package though.
- tvon 12y ago
  Yeah, I came across `natpmpc` when I discovered the Airport Express at the office does not support uPNP. Our new Asus N66U supports NAT-PMP so I thought maybe it was more common these days.

ppierald 12y ago

It's important to know that your content, intellectual property, and possibly confidential user data including full http request/responses are being proxied by this service. Their privacy policy is vague about what they will do with this information other than to say they will collect and process it: https://meetfinch.com/privacy https://meetfinch.com/privacy "In running and maintaining our website we may collect and process the following data about you: Information about your use of our site including details of your visits such as pages viewed and the resources that you access. Such information includes traffic data, location data and other communication data. Information provided voluntarily by you. For example, when you register for information or make a purchase. Information that you provide when you communicate with us by any means."

lachgr 12y ago
I think that all of these type of services are able to access your content. Maybe the don't do so, but unless you run this on your own server, your data is in principle accessible by the service.
- ppierald 12y ago
  Agreed. Just want to point it out to those that jump in head first without understanding the consequences of that action. You might get fired from your job for doing this or severly reprimanded. You might unwittingly cause a production data breach for some reason you never even imagined. So it's a message of be careful and understand fully what you are doing.

motowilliams 12y ago

As yet another alternative Runscope Passageway https://www.runscope.com/docs/passageway https://www.runscope.com/docs/passageway

johns 12y ago
It's a crowded space :) http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxying-landscape http://john-sheehan.com/blog/a-survey-of-the-localhost-proxy...

jschuur 12y ago

You appear to have 10 hours of traffic a month right now, while it's in beta: https://meetfinch.com/pricing https://meetfinch.com/pricing Once they roll out paid plans, their 20 hour/month plan is $15/month. And (at least based on their pricing page now) you don't get reserved subdomains until the $25/month option, so you end up getting a random URL whenever you set a site up (again).

Cieplak 12y ago

ssh -R 80:localhost:8080 ubuntu@some-ec2-instance -i key.pem

__david__ 12y ago
This has been my technique for a long time. I usually add -N, since there's usually no need to do anything on that host.
itsadok 12y ago
You'd need to tweak the server for this to actually work. By default, remote forwarded ports are not accessible from other hosts, and non-root cannot listen on port 80. http://serverfault.com/a/133440/1726 http://serverfault.com/a/133440/1726 http://serverfault.com/a/285617/1726 http://serverfault.com/a/285617/1726

justintocci 12y ago

Its crazy the data people will hand over to total strangers for the promise of a little convenience.

robobro 12y ago

The name looked familiar... then I realized, there's multiple Finches. https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Finch https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Using%20Finch

dscpls 12y ago

It would be nice to make a upnp version of this for when you're on the same network, you just don't want to mess with finding your ip

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

jqm 12y ago

This looks cool but I couldn't imagine putting a development concept through someone I don't know's server.

tomrod 12y ago

Huh. And here I figured Finch was command-line pidgin. What happens when names collide in open source world?

hyperair 12y ago
Basically one of either outcomes happen: 1. Maintainers of both projects fight it out and one project gets renamed. Users are happy. Packagers are happy. 2. Maintainers of both projects fight it out and neither compromise. Users of both projects (intersection of the sets, rather than union) are pissed. Packagers are even more pissed, and put in an annoying and difficult situation, and forced to come out with weird hacky solutions to appease users. (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=614907 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=614907) To any of you who read this and find yourself naming a project in the future, do your users some justice and at least do some cursory Googling before settling on a name. And please don't pick annoying-to-Google names like + or * or - or _ or some other one- or two-character name.

tedchs 12y ago

Like I said for the last one of these, your own VPS or server plus 2 lines of Nginx config plus ssh -R gets you the same thing with no additional dependency. And you control the domain name.

jonalmeida 12y ago

Some of the subdomain URLs it creates are pretty hilarious. I got https://massive-boys.usefinch.com/ https://massive-boys.usefinch.com/