Learn about SLYD's secure tunneling infrastructure that connects your compute instances to the outside world.
SLYD's secure tunneling is a feature that creates private, encrypted connections between your compute instances and the internet, allowing you to securely access your applications and services without exposing them directly to the public internet. Built on Cloudflare Zero Trust technology, SLYD tunnels provide enterprise-grade security with minimal configuration.
SLYD creates secure tunnels automatically for each compute instance, making your applications and services available through unique, randomly-generated subdomains or custom domains that you configure.
Fig 1. SLYD Tunneling Architecture
A user accesses your application through your SLYD tunnel URL (e.g., your-app-123.slyd.cloud).
The request is routed to Cloudflare's global edge network, which provides DDoS protection and initial security screening.
Zero Trust rules verify the user's identity and access permissions before allowing the connection to proceed.
The SLYD Tunnel Gateway receives the encrypted request and routes it to the appropriate compute instance.
Your application running on the compute instance processes the request and returns a response through the same secure path.
SLYD's tunneling infrastructure provides numerous advantages over traditional networking approaches:
SLYD offers different types of tunnels to suit various use cases:
Connect web applications and APIs through HTTP and HTTPS protocols. These tunnels are ideal for web services, dashboards, and APIs.
Secure tunneling for TCP-based applications and services, such as databases, SSH, and custom protocols.
Specialized tunnels for secure shell access to your compute instances with additional security features.
You can manage your tunnels through the SLYD dashboard or the API:
From your compute instance details page, select the "Tunnels" tab to view and manage all tunnels for that instance.
Click "Create Tunnel" and specify the tunnel configuration:
Set up access controls for your tunnel:
Review your configuration and click "Activate Tunnel" to deploy it. The tunnel will be active within seconds.
For production applications, you can use your own domain with SLYD tunnels. Simply add a custom domain in the tunnel settings and configure a CNAME record in your DNS settings pointing to your SLYD tunnel address.
app.yourdomain.com. CNAME your-app-123.slyd.cloud.SLYD tunnels include several security features to protect your applications and data:
All tunnel traffic is encrypted using TLS 1.3, with automatic certificate management and rotation.
Access can be limited based on user identity, device security posture, location, and other factors.
Web Application Firewall provides protection against common attacks like SQL injection, XSS, and CSRF.
Enforce 2FA for access to sensitive applications and services through your tunnels.
Comprehensive logs of all access attempts and activity through your tunnels for security analysis.
Prevent abuse by setting request rate limits for your tunnels, with customizable thresholds.
SLYD provides detailed analytics for your tunnels to help you monitor performance and usage:
Monitor traffic patterns, request rates, and bandwidth usage for each of your tunnels.
View where your tunnel traffic is coming from to understand your user base.
Track security incidents and blocked attacks for each tunnel.
147 in the last 30 days
23 in the last 30 days
12% of total requests
Analyze response times and performance data to optimize your applications.
You can programmatically manage tunnels using the SLYD API:
curl -X POST https://api.slyd.cloud/v1/tunnels \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"instance_id": "inst-123abc456def",
"type": "http",
"subdomain": "my-app",
"port": 8080,
"path": "/api",
"auth_type": "oauth"
}'curl -X GET https://api.slyd.cloud/v1/tunnels \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"For complete API documentation for tunnel management, visit the Tunnels API Reference.
Follow these recommendations to get the most out of SLYD tunnels:
We're constantly improving our documentation. Let us know how we can make it better!