Unable to connect via RDP when routing traffic through Cloudflare?
First time using Cloudflare - have got it working on my @ record, however I have an rdp service, and upon a ping request, it is showing that traffic is being routed via cloudflare, however it will not let me connect into the RDP connection - is there something im missing? seems like a permissions/firewall thing.
Would really appreciate the assistance/knowledge.
30 Replies
cloudflare only proxies http traffic
appreciate the reply! - ah so turns out I'm unable to RDP in with cloudflare?
what would you use as an alternative for RDPing into a server without exposing the public IP?
is there a reason you can't use the private ip?
i think cloudflare has some tunnelling for all traffic but i'm not familiar with it
Yeah I looked a bit into tunneling but no professional over here so quit whilst I was ahead haha, tbh I might just use teamviewer/chrome remote desktop as an alternative. I really do appreciate the help AZ.
Spectrum, really expensive though
Alternatively you could use Zero Trust w/ Private Networking or with cloudflared access which is available for free: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-networks/use-cases/rdp/
But it is a bit difficult to setup, would require you to either run WARP VPN or cloudflared access (a cli tool) whenever you want to connect.
It would be nice and secured though
Appreciate the help! will give it a look into 🙂 - I'm also experiencing issues as shown in the message above which I tagged AZ into, by any chance would you have an idea on how to fix this Chaika?
It's going to depend on the tool and what it does, but
@ isn't actually the record name. It's just a placeholder/magic value the dashboard accepts, the API is sent and sees it as your full domain name (back-yards.com)
You could try either nothing/empty if it accepts it, or your domain nameThanks, as in try an empty value on dnsomatic?
Yea
seems i have to set a value - think this would work?
ehh I would try having the hostname be empty
Says missing info - inactive when there is no hostname unfortunately
Really do appreciate the assistance by the way, been stuck on this for almost 12 hours now lol
It looks like their offical response is to create a CNAME on your root to something else like www and then just have dns-matic update www
https://support.opendns.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360073214511-How-to-update-root-address-of-domain-on-Cloudflare-with-Dynamic-IP
OpenDNS
How to update root address of domain on Cloudflare with Dynamic IP
Hello,
I'd like to setup DNS-O-Matic to update the root address of my domain on Cloudflare. In other words, I want to update the record below:
But in the DNS-O-Matic control panel for Cloudflare, ...
yea, so just point your root/apex to it with a CNAME
CF is smart enough to flatten that out, it's not like it would make two requests or anything
kind of silly, there's nothing preventing the API from being used to update the apex domain record, but it seems they just don't support it
Damn, still getting unable to find record after setting the cname 😦
the cname won't help that work
you can just delete the one for your root/apexnow
the cname is just saying "Hey, when you want to resolve this, look at www"
ahhh i see
and www is being updated automagically by it
I see! so its basically like an updater in a way
as www. ip is updated - it will alert the @ record to change IP to that too?
It's not really alerting as much as it is internally when Cloudflare goes to send a request to your apex it will internally resolve/ get the IP for www and send the request there
(and since Cloudflare is also your DNS, it's not going to add any latency when proxied since all your DNS records are right there)
ah okay, basically all I want to know is - if my server goes down / IP changes (as it's not static) that the website will always update to the new IP with my current setup? only reason I was trying to configure the @ record to work with dnsomatic was I was worried my website on www would lose connection once the ip has changed and nobody would be able to connect to it.
yes it'll all be updated with that setup as long as dnsomatic does its job
Perfect!
maybe look into cloudflare tunnels though if you have some time, free and they're great for hosting stuff behind dynamic IPs
oh for sure - i definetly will
only looked into cloudflare as of yesterday haha
but seems really cool!
I have it set on a scheduled task to boot the updater software on startup, so hopefully that should work then! 🙂
run their connector software (cloudflared) on your server, and it creates outbound connections to Cloudflare's edge, so requests go User -> Cloudflare -> down tunnel -> your server -> real service.
Because it's outbound, you don't need to open any ports, port forward, deal with any firewalls. It doesn't matter if your IP changes , etc
nice! will look into that 🙂
Only the way your can get your Windows servers behind cloud flare is use a private tunnel that you host your self then pings back to cloud flare and your remote desktop now behind cloudflare
You can use domain names RDNS to connect to your win server if you point IP to a A record. Please note you can not switch on CDN as will no connect only reason doesn’t connect as cloudflare doesn’t allow 3389 as open port on cloudflare CDN only way around this would be private tunnel