Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I made my Raspberry Pi a secret phone homing server
Tools, calculator, and helpful information for network engineering, web developers, and IT professionals.
TunnelsUp provides tools, calculators, and reference materials for network engineers, web developers, and IT professionals. The site offers articles on firewalls, VPNs, and networking topics, along with exclusive tools… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. I made my Raspberry Pi a secret phone homing server launched in 2013; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1

GlassWire is a modern personal firewall and network monitor with over 54 million downloads. Download GlassWire free!
2014 · glasswire.com · its alternatives →
- 2TC
Looking to get some feedback from the Hacker News community. I wrote the book with a focus on penetration testers and red teamers, but there are great examples for network admins, developers, and blue team defenders as well. You can pick up a copy for free here through May 19, 2019: https://gumroad.com/l/the_cyber_plumbers_handbook/hackernews... Please note, because it's hosted on Gumroad, it does require an email. If you don't want to give out your actual email, check out an anonymous email service. I give it away to students for free, so if you know of one that…
2019 · its alternatives →
- 3

- 4
Pinggy▲282Public URLs for localhost without downloading any binary
2024 · pinggy.io · its alternatives →
- 5
tunnelto.dev▲186Expose localhost to the internet with a public URL
2020 · tunnelto.dev · its alternatives →
- 6

Hi everyone, I recently published a small open-source project. It’s a minimal network packet analyzer written in Go — designed more like a learning toy than a replacement for Wireshark. It currently supports parsing basic protocols like TLS, DNS, and HTTP, and includes a tiny fuzzing engine to test payload responses. You can inspect raw packet content directly from the terminal. The output is colored for readability, and the code structure is kept simple and clear. The entire program is very small — just about 400 lines of Go code. I know it’s not anywhere near Wireshark’s level, and I still…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7

Expose your local web server to the internet with a public URL
2020 · tunnelto.dev · its alternatives →
- 8

- 9

This program can be used to tunnel TCP connections through a file. People have used it for interesting things: - Bridging connections which would otherwise be blocked by a firewall - Tunneling through RDP (similar to an SSH tunnel) - Exposing a localhost web server to others Key features I put effort into: 1. The shared file is restarted every 10 MB, so it doesn't grow indefinitely. 2. Optimisations for latency & bandwidth. (800 Mbps on a Gigabit LAN. 108 Mbps if file tunneling through RDP) 3. Synchronisation between two sides (each side can be started and restarted in any order) I'd love to…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10SA
I've frequently found myself using [nvitop](https://github.com/XuehaiPan/nvitop) to diagnose GPU/CPU contention issues. The two best things about it are: - It's easy to install if I can access pip in the container - It makes a compelling screenshot (which helps me communicate with coworkers.) With those two lessons in mind: Here is Sping! Purpose: Help observe and diagnose latency issues at layer 4+ (TCP/HTTP/HTTPS) Two good things about it: - It's easy to install if you have pip. (Available at…
2025 · dseltzer.gitlab.io · its alternatives →
- 11

build network tunnels over WebRTC. Contribute to rtctunnel/rtctunnel development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
TunnelBear▲174Secure your data and hide your IP address behind a bear.
2014 · tunnelbear.com · its alternatives →
- 13MA
Easily create SSH tunnels.
2018 · davrodpin.github.io · its alternatives →
- 14

- 15

OP here. I built this because I recently caught myself almost pasting a block of logs containing AWS keys into Claude. The Problem: I need the reasoning capabilities of cloud models (GPT/Claude/Gemini), but I can't trust myself not to accidentally leak PII or secrets. The Solution: A Chrome extension that acts as a local middleware. It intercepts the prompt and runs a local BERT model (via a Python FastAPI backend) to scrub names, emails, and keys before the request leaves the browser. A few notes up front (to set expectations clearly): Everything runs 100% locally. Regex detection…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16

I'm launching Wirewiki.com today! Wirewiki makes the internet’s hidden infrastructure browsable. I quit my job 5 years ago to scale Nslookup.io. But after reaching 600k monthly users, I hit a ceiling. I couldn't naturally expand beyond DNS because of the domain name. So I went back to the drawing board: how would I make it today? Not as a collection of tools, but as a browsable graph. I've spent hundreds of hours and commits building that. It's not even at 10% of what I want it to be, but more than enough to be useful, and (in my biased opinion) much better than what's out there. Wirewiki…
Feb 2026 · wirewiki.com · its alternatives →
- 17PA
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
Jan 2026 · pipenet.dev · its alternatives →
- 18

- 19

- 20

How to "encourage" your children to use the internet more for learning using Pi-hole 5.0 - 1stOctet/YouWillUnderstandWhenYouAreOlder
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21

When a VPN Alone Is Not Enough
2014 · tinyhardwarefirewall.com · its alternatives →
- 22TY
Hi HN, Some misbehaving networks drop WireGuard packets either by accident or on purpose. Commonly the latter is done with simple DPI rules that block the handshake initiation [1], but it could be applied to other message types as well. We thought it would be great if there was tool for folks to use as a quick litmus test to see if this happening for them, without having to configure a client to send data through a random, functional WireGuard tunnel to an untrusted remote host. So we built probe.sh. How it works: - The probe.sh web app is an Elixir Phoenix app that spawns a few gen_udp…
2024 · probe.sh · its alternatives →
- 23IB
Senior full stack software engineer with 8+ years shipping production systems in React, Node.js, Python, and Rails. Previously a Product Engineer at Ghost. Based in South Korea.
2021 · ronaldlangeveld.com · its alternatives →
- 24

2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →