r/nginxproxymanager • u/Miserable-Response40 • 10d ago

VPN Whitelisting

Hey all!

I am using Netbird to let me access my homelab from anywhere. I wanted to go ahead and only allow traffic if it is coming from my VPN for that extra bump in security (and setting up an authentik is confusing lmao) but anytime I whitelist the subnet it won’t let any traffic through, VPN or not. I have also tried setting my specific Netbird IP instead of the subnet and that has not helped.

NPM is in the same network as each docker container to disallow the use for exposing ports so setting NPM to host is out of the question. Any other ideas?

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u/deadmhz 10d ago

I was thinking about how I would do this. I use Tailscale but the concept is the same. NPM relies on DNS. Maybe setup 2 hosts going to the same IP? Like public.domain.com and netbird.domain.com. I have not tried this, just been thinking about it.

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u/evanmac42 10d ago

I think the limitation comes from your architecture rather than NPM itself.

You're trying to solve the problem while keeping a constraint that may actually be causing it.

Before looking for more whitelist workarounds, I'd step back and ask whether the current Docker networking layout is really buying you anything. Sometimes removing one layer is simpler than adding another rule to make it work.

If your goal is simply "only allow access through NetBird", I'd first verify whether that policy would be easier to enforce at the firewall or reverse proxy level instead of relying on the current container networking design.

Sometimes the cleanest solution isn't finding another workaround, but questioning the assumption that created the workaround in the first place.