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For local services, I don't see the benefit of using DNS challenges and a Let's Encrypt certificate over running my own CA and generating my own certificates. It's not that much work to trust my root certificate on each device, and then I don't need an internet connection to verify local service certificates.

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> It's not that much work to trust my root certificate on each device

Sure, but is trusting your homebrewed CA on all your devices for essentially everything really a good idea?

When your homebrewed CA somehow gets compromised, all your devices are effectively compromised and not only for local connections, but everything that uses PKIX.

Name constraints

https://systemoverlord.com/2020/06/14/private-ca-with-x-509-...

Make sure all the TLS clients you use have support for name constraints. When I evaluated this in 2023, Chrome was in the process of adding support. I'd love to see a caniuse style analysis of TLS features, people assume they work but support varies.

I can either add a Cloudflare API key and Certbot on my NAS, or I could generate a root certificate and add it to my desktop computers, laptop, tablet, phones, Apple TV, etc.

Doesn't seem that tough of a choice. I guess in the future I could even forego the Cloudflare API key and just have the persistent DNS record there once.

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