Port forwarding with proxy server

Question

I'm behind a firewall with incoming connections blocked on all ports. I'd like to run an Apache Web Server on my machine. Is it possible to configure a free public proxy server to forward the incoming connections to my local server through the firewall?

Answer 1

You don't need a proxy outside of the firewall blocking your machine, because if no one else can connect to your machine how can the proxy? All you need to do is make an exception in the firewall to forward ports to your server. If you have access to the router that is acting as a firewall, log in and turn on port forwarding, forward port 80 from the router to your LAN address.

If you don't have access to whatever is acting as the firewall there is no way anyone outside your LAN can access your machine unless you connect to the outside world first. An example of this is SSH tunelling, which judging by your question might be too complex to implement.

Answer 2

If outgoing connections are relatively open, you can ask ssh(1) to create tunnels for you.

ssh -R *:8888:localhost:80 username@proxyserver.example.com

Now, connections to proxyserver.example.com:8888 should be forwarded to your local port 80. The details from the ssh(1) manpage:

 -R [bind_address:]port:host:hostport
         Specifies that the given port on the remote (server) host
         is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the
         local side.  This works by allocating a socket to listen
         to port on the remote side, and whenever a connection is
         made to this port, the connection is forwarded over the
         secure channel, and a connection is made to host port
         hostport from the local machine.

         Port forwardings can also be specified in the
         configuration file.  Privileged ports can be forwarded
         only when logging in as root on the remote machine.  IPv6
         addresses can be specified by enclosing the address in
         square braces or using an alternative syntax:
         [bind_address/]host/port/hostport.

         By default, the listening socket on the server will be
         bound to the loopback interface only.  This may be
         overridden by specifying a bind_address.  An empty
         bind_address, or the address ‘*’, indicates that the
         remote socket should listen on all interfaces.
         Specifying a remote bind_address will only succeed if the
         server's GatewayPorts option is enabled (see
         sshd_config(5)).

         If the port argument is ‘0’, the listen port will be
         dynamically allocated on the server and reported to the
         client at run time.