VPNs work. Port forwarding works. Both have been reliable tools for decades. But they were designed for a world where you control both ends of the connection.
When your devices sit in networks you do not manage — customer offices, retail locations, remote warehouses — the assumptions behind VPNs and port forwarding break down.
The VPN Problem
A site-to-site VPN requires configuration on the remote router. You need admin access, compatible hardware, and ongoing maintenance. If the customer changes their router, the VPN breaks. If their IT team updates firewall rules, the VPN breaks. Every remote site becomes a support liability.
The Port Forwarding Problem
Port forwarding has the same problem, plus a worse one: it opens a port to the internet. That port needs to be secured, monitored, and maintained. For every device. At every site.
The ProxyPass Alternative
ProxyPass eliminates both sides of this problem. The node installs on the remote machine in under two minutes with a single command. It connects outbound — no router access, no firewall changes, no cooperation from the remote network's IT team needed.
Once connected, you access the device through your ProxyPass subdomain. SSH, RDP, API calls, file access — all through one tunnel, authenticated with API keys, encrypted with TLS.
Scenario: The Managed Service Provider
Consider a managed service provider (MSP) supporting 20 small business customers. Each customer has a server or two, some have IoT devices, and all of them have different ISPs, routers, and network setups.
With VPNs, the MSP would need to maintain 20 VPN configurations — different hardware on each end, different firmware versions, different credentials. When Customer #7 changes their ISP and gets a new router, the VPN goes down. The MSP spends an afternoon reconfiguring it. Multiply that by 20 customers, and VPN maintenance becomes a significant part of the workload.
With ProxyPass, each customer site has one or more nodes. Each customer gets their own node group with appropriate security settings. The MSP's team accesses any customer's infrastructure through the same dashboard, with the same tools, regardless of the underlying network. When Customer #7 changes their ISP, nothing breaks — the node reconnects outbound and the tunnel is back within 30 seconds.
New customer onboarding? Send them an install command. They paste it into a terminal. Done.
In Practice at Scale
Your operations team needs to access 50 digital signage players deployed across shopping centers. With a VPN, you would need 50 site configurations, 50 maintenance relationships with different network teams, and 50 potential points of failure. With ProxyPass, you install 50 nodes, and they all connect to your dashboard instantly. If a node goes offline, you see it. When it comes back, it reconnects automatically.
No certificates to renew. No shared secrets to rotate. No split-tunnel configurations. No client software on the accessing side. Just a tunnel that works.