https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling
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.
Honestly it's a really fun exercise. Fairly challenging, but well within the reach of a single developer. I believe I'm currently working on my 5th incarnation.
Cloudflare tunnels are good, but Cloudflare terminates TLS certificates, and scans the traffic. People host on premise for privacy, which is moot if using Cloudflare.
FRP is simple and works, but it takes inbound traffic from open Internet. A vulnerability in it could compromise your environment. The transport encryption is customized (probably using TLS). It’s not a VPN quality software, going through audits. It may need a reverse proxy in front of it.
The ones that make outbound connections seem better. Ngrok pricing is not good, particularly when using custom domains. Tailscale funnel seems to be for short lived lightweight connections, has bandwidth and speed limitations due use of relay servers, kills my CPU, and requires a tailnet.
SSH reverse tunnels require some scripting with autossh or similar to ensure persistent connections.
I'm a fan of their approach[0] though. No termination of TLS, SNI proxying(I presume) to backend machines, etc.
There are several options on the list that do e2ee, including commercial services that likely have better pricing than ngrok. That said, I'm not aware of any that are marketed for high bandwidth usage such as video streaming. FWIW my 5th incarnation mentioned above will be such a service.
This is similar to running your own VPN server, vs using what’s called zero trust network access with services provided by companies such as Cloudflare.
Cloudflare tunnels are simple, robust and include a range of features: various authentication options, a secure internet-facing webpage in Cloudflare Access, DDoS mitigation, IP hiding, DNS and domain setup, etc . If they don’t decrypt and scan the traffic, that’s how an ideal solution would look like.
I think self hosting internet facing servers is not a good idea for most people. That component should be outsourced to specialists, in a product that includes a range of features (see my comment on Cloudflare Access below).
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.)
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.)
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.