I would like to add a some real time data updates using push to an existing CakePHP application. It seems to me that websockets are the best way to do so and from what I've read, the easiest way to start using websockets is with node.js. Now the issue I have is that my application server is very very limited portwise and there is virtually no way to change that.
I have apache currently running on *:80 and *:443 and sslh listening on port *:4433. Requests from the outside are sent to my server on :4433 and sslh takes care of handling ssh and https traffic, however on the inside, all my clients machines are using :443 directly. I could potentially open more ports for inside clients, but from outside, there is currently no way to do this. Most of my clients connect from the inside network, but more and more are using the application from outside too.
Note that port 80 is only used to redirect users entering http://example.com to https://example.com as all my services are encrypted. So if node.js was able to to send every http request to https and use port 80 for secure websockets, this would work too!
My question: Is it possible to run Apache and Websockets (probably in the form of Node.js) on the same port, and have either Node.js working as a proxy for Apache or Apache working as a proxy for Node.js?
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I have a web application running on a Bluehost server. I am trying to retrieve files hosted on a local server. On the local server, I have port forwarding and NodeJS listening on port 3000. I could do 80 as well, but from what I have read, that is not safe.
The issue I am running into is mainly the SSL cert for the local Node instance. The web application requires post requests to be made to https:// sources.
What are some best practice approaches to making this work? I have heard about installing Apache and running a ProxyPass to port 3000, but I am still concerned that the port 80 will have no SSL. Any help would be appreciated!!
First its worth noting that there are many approaches to hosting a web service.
Node can handle https connection, you should read the native https module documentation for how this works.
I tend to use Nginx (although apache is great and is a battle-tested solution) as a proxy server to node as, in general, I find it speeds up the process to get a product live. It also allows you to extract potential requirements from your node server, such as caching and SSL, so your node app can just focus on business requirements.
If you go for a proxy server, Nginx (and others), have modules that will handle SSL certificates. Lots of documentation online about how to set this up.
Something to keep in mind is that PORT 80 and 3000 are connection points for traffic. You will only be able to interact with the server on these ports if you bind and expose an application to them. If nothing is exposed to PORT 80, then connect attempts will just fail.
The best practices I tend to employ are:
No excuse not to use SSL nowadays, the standard is to expose https server on port 443.
If you choose to expose port 80, redirect all traffic to 443. This guarantees a secure connection.
I have a chrome extension which uses an externel socket.io server to connect clients together.
During development I was able to connect to the server via http://localhost:2087 just fine, but right now I need socket.io to work over HTTPS so I can access it from a browser tab being server by HTTPS.
I don't want to deal with certificates, and want to keep the code on the socket.io server mostly the same, so I want to proxy the IP for the server via Cloudflare and establish SSL like that.
But I haven't been able to, the socket.io server uses no other webserver, but I can change it to use the native NodeJS http or https libraries.
But I haven't been able to access the socket.io server via the Cloudflare proxy. Clouflare returns 522 errors, which means a connection timeout.
Apparantly flexible SSL only works with with ports 443->80
Other ports are not supported...
I run an ExpressJS website in a docker container forwarded to a localhost port. I use NGINX to proxy and push it to the internet with caching, SSL, and all of the normal things.
I am wondering how I need to implement HTTP 2 and 3. Similar to SSL, do I only need to use it on my proxy server (NGINX), or does the whole chain need to support it?
I'm going to use socket.io on nodeJs in order to be able to send messages from my server to my client.
Node runs on a separate port from what I normally use for my hosting. Is there any safety risk in using the port number in the url in production? For example, I'm directing users to domain.tld:0000?
There are no more security risks in exposing node.js on another port than running node.js itself exposed to the internet.
I have two different applications on the same server. One of them is running on the 80 port (mydomain.com), another on the port 443 (sub.mydomain.com) and has wildcard certificate.
The first application is only for information purposes and don't need websockets support.
The second application should have secure websockets support (wss protocol).
I tried to set up juggernaut gem (for websockets) for my rails app with nginx server on the engineyard cloud, but i have one problem. Engineyard cloud provide only two opened ports: 80 and 443. I know that nginx do not fully support http 1.1 reverse proxing, so i can't use proxing from nginx for redirects websockets requests to the specific local port (in my case this port is 8080).
I tried use HAProxy and it's work for me when i use only unsecure websockets, but i need to support secure websockets. As i know in this case i should use something like STunnel for tunneling my https request and than use HAProxy, but when i test it - i saw that the server has to work several times slower and i still did not work to use the secure socket connection :(
Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Maybe someone will tell how to set up nginx for multiple applications (one of them should work via https) and secure websockets using only two ports (80 and 443).
p.s. Also i used a node-http-proxy, in this case i was able to set up proxy for different nginx applications but i do not get run websockets (happened only for "handshake" via nginx, not for "switching protocols")
I did some research on the various reverse proxies and websockets not too long ago. The bottom line is that websockets is new, and the reverse proxy support for it is very poor right now.
The recommendation I saw and I agree with is that you should run your websockets on a different stack than the rest of your items. That usually means putting it on a separate domain or subdomain.
You still have to deal with the complexities of getting the reverse proxies working, but it will be less complicated if you don't have to worry about breaking the other stuff.
Also, I agree that maybe you'll get better answers at serverfault or superuser.