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Comment by tamimio | Hacker News Reader

What’s the use case of DDNS in 2026 when you can have vpn+reverse proxy? Or just vpn really and never expose anything

Your public website / blog? Sometimes you want services that are accessible publicly, like your observability and logging servers (eliminates the VPN point of failure).

I have multiple public sites that are running through vpn+reverse proxy, for example, vaultwarden, and it’s more secure because in the reverse proxy I can have rules to pass the connection to specific end points so clients can access it securely but the actual webpage is locked behind SSO. I never encountered a VPN failure, if the connection is up it is up, and it’s an encrypted tunnel too. Another example, if you use something like coolify, you can pair it with another reverse proxy on top of traefic one builtin, and if you browse that service in coolify, your packet is going through an encrypted link all the way to the docker image behind coolify.

Last time I used DDNS i think was around 2012 in an NVR where I needed to access some cameras publicly.

I like to believe that there are different use cases that play with different needs, I don't know your exact needs on the topic but it sounds like you have figured out what needs you have on a technical basis.

The idea is not really to never expose anything, almost the opposite or at least understand where on the internet different things live and be able to address them globally

You could just as easily ask "what's the use case of a VPN when you can expose the service over the Internet?". Yes, publicly exposing a service and using a VPN cover similar use cases. But one isn't inherently better than the other, nor does one make the other obsolete.

I use it for dev & testing services hosted at home.

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