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Pipenet

A Modern Alternative to Localtunnel

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Hey HN!localtunnel's server needs random ports per client. That doesn't work on Fly.io or behind strict firewalls.We rewrote it in TypeScript and added multiplexing over a single port. Open-source and 100% self-hostable.Public instance at *.pipenet.dev if you don't want to self-host.Built at Glama for our MCP Inspector, but it's a generic tunnel with no ties to our infra.https://github.com/punkpeye/pipenet

HN · launched Jan 19, 2026 · 114 upvotes (top 9%) · 0 views

Niche: networking and tunneling utilities · 190 launches, 10 in the last 7 days ▼ -17% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags
  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Developer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

More like this: all 190 launches in networking and tunneling utilities →

Could you build this?

Partial A basic reverse proxy wrapper is feasible, but building a robust multi-client TCP multiplexer over a single port that handles connection lifecycle, buffering, and high-throughput streaming requires non-trivial networking knowledge.

What it would actually take: The architecture involves a Node.js/TypeScript or Go daemon client and a public edge relay server connected via a single multiplexed protocol (such as Yamux, HTTP/2 tunnels, or custom framing over WebSockets/TLS). The hard part is managing concurrent stream state, backpressure, connection reconnects, edge wildcard TLS termination, and host header routing on restricted PaaS environments like Fly.io. A developer needs solid networking and distributed systems knowledge to prevent memory leaks and handle dropped packets gracefully.

Discussion

19 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: localtunnel, ngrok, SSH-based tunnels (bore, rathole), connet, tuns.sh (managed sish instance)

Concerns raised: WebSocket latency overhead compared to SSH-based alternatives, Encryption overhead (RSA key size impacts performance), Scaling capacity with increased demand, Slow performance of existing free tier solutions

Feature requests: TCP and UDP tunneling support, Dockerized version with SSL management (Caddy integration), HTTPS/WebSockets support via SSH tunnels

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 304 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #23 of 305 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 82 days after the earliest competitor.

Related data

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.