VPN and have them punch in to a cheap or free cloud instance that acts as a hub router.
You give them a config file and they feed it to their device or router, use a private subnet in the 10.0.0.0/8 range because everyone is on 192.168.1.0/24 and then they just hit it at 10.0.0.1 or whatever.
I like Wireguard but you might have to use something with layer 2 support if you want service discovery to work for true zero config.
All good stuff, but I should clarify, the friends and family in question are not tech literate people. They call the internet “the wifi”, get the shitty gateway from Spectrum and plug it in.
Assuming I can apply any sort of configuration to that device in the first place, the second something breaks, either I’m getting a call, or they’ll call Spectrum and their rep will reset the gateway to defaults.
I’d also be hesitant to employ a VPN to cloud solution, because I have no idea what that’s going to do to the speed.
Basically I was just asking if there was a free method of doing this securely and discreetly where the only thing they ever have to do is put an IP address into Jellyfin. I’m perfectly aware there may not be, I was just curious if there was a method I hadn’t heard of.
Something I’ve kind of thought about is maybe, at least for my parents and closest friend, buying a cheap local machine (or repurposing an old OptiPlex or something) for them to keep in the house that I would mirror my library to, or least be able to manage remotely. “Sure, mom, you wanna see this? I’ll tell your box to fetch it.”
