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Comment by arturadib | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I don't quite get this. Why can't I just grab my public IP address from Whatismyip.com, and check the Web Sharing option under System Preferences on my Mac? (For Linux, simply fire up Apache; my guess is that most Linux users know how to do that).

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Often times you are behind a firewall and this isn't a viable option. It's also easier to remember a domain name rather than an IP address.

You'll often have NAT to deal with as well, and have to set up explicit port forwards to your local device (and give it a static IP address) in your routers.

"Simply fire up Apache" is a bit of an oxymoron.

/etc/init.d/httpd start

Though the real challenge this product solves is in getting around firewall restrictions. Let's say you're at the airport on free wifi. How are you going to share localhost then?

python -m 'SimpleHTTPServer' 8080

service httpd start

You could do that, including figuring out your NAT/Firewall, how to proxy through apache to your app and have to worry about security. Or, you could just do this:

  show 3100

I dunno, I'm a busy dude and my time isn't free. So I'd rather pay $5 a month to have someone figure this out for me and let me spend time leveraging it to build cool stuff of my own.

I'm inclined to agree, currently I have ssh setup on my home machine and use dyndns which is free and pretty simple. Setting up a server would be equally simple for the technically inclined.

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