Unless I don't understand something, reverse proxies only handle the routing and address connections coming in based on used domains, no? Why, in that case, would they be slow?

Prior to using Meshnet, I set up a couple of self-hosted services with dynamic DNSes and reverse proxies.

General idea is, that:

1. You set up a dynamic DNS (I used duckdns), by setting up a cron job that pings the dynamic DNS every now and then, so that it knows what's your current IP.
2. You set up port forwarding (ports 80 and 443) for your home lab
3. You set up a Nginx in a docker container with ports 80 and 443
4. You set up your dynamic DNS domains to be forwarded to specific ports on your homelab server.

I can easily download files from my server at the upload speeds my ISP rates my network at (20 MB/s).

If you already have a dedicated device set up with Jellyfin you can skip reverse proxies, dynamic DNSes, and port-forwarding all together with Meshnet. Here is a documentation that goes into detail on how to set everything up: https://meshnet.nordvpn.com/how-to/remote-files-media-access/access-jellyfin-media-sever-remotely

You can give Meshnet a try, it doesn't require port-forwarding https://meshnet.nordvpn.com/how-to/gaming.

Nice! Do you reckon with GPU you could potentially run it in real time? I've set up an endpoint with Whisper to transcribe videos one of my colleagues needed for work on my homelab server, which cumulatively must have saved everyone days worth of time by now.