Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.

[Thread #564 for this sub, first seen 2nd Mar 2024, 14:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

As far as I'm aware you don't need a seperate VPS if you're using tailscale, or you don't need tailscale of you use a reverse proxy via a vps. You can just host it in the same place you're hosting the games and apps.

Using a VPN (like Tailscale or Netbird) will make setup very easy, but probably a bit slower, because they probably connect through the VPN service's infrastructure.

My recommended approach would be to use a directly connected VPN, like OpenVPN, that just has two nodes on it -- your VPS, and your home server. This will bypass the potentially slow infrastructure of a commercial VPN service. Then, use iptables rules to have the VPS forward the relevant connections (TCP port 80/443 for the web apps, TCP/UDP port 25565 for Minecraft, etc.) to the home server's OpenVPN IP address.

My second recommended approach would be to use a program like openbsd-inetd on your VPS to forward all relevant connections to your real IP address. Then, open those ports on your home connection, but only for the VPS's IP address. If some random person tries to portscan you, they will see closed ports.

cloudflare tunnel?

Stick the cloudflare container in a docker network with other services you wish to expose for access.

Tailscale funnel lets you expose services to the internet without opening any ports.

There's also the option of inviting your friends to your Tailscale network and limiting them to specific services. But they'll have to install it on their devices.

ZeroTier is also an option in the same vein as TailScale.

You will share your IP with something like TailScale or ZeroTier.

Reverse proxies can be good but with gaming ... there's only so much you can do because of the custom protocols. Most of that stuff isn't going to care about the DNS. You're also introducing additional latency if you use a VPS as a "middle man."

I think you need to consider who you're going to be giving access to and what threats you're trying to protect against.

My advice would be to set up ZeroTier on all the machines that are going to play together and set it up so it only allows connections between clients and the server (there's a guide for this in their documentation). Then give the gaming machine a ZeroTier IP you put in your DNS.

Most games use different ports so there really isn't a need for lots of DNS names. However, you could assign multiple ZeroTier IPs to the same machine and give each game server its own DNS and its own IP.