A Little Demand#
If you are a designer who enjoys tinkering, how can you share the photos you have taken, the posters you have designed, videos, etc., with other colleagues in the company? Assuming there are hundreds or thousands of materials, wouldn't it be annoying if everyone asked you for images whenever they needed them?
Therefore, collecting and organizing design project cases, product images, posters, and videos using eagle is an excellent way to manage them, but you can't install eagle on every person's computer and authorize account purchases.
Thus, there is another application that can build a material sharing website from the local eagle database, OAO PicHome-Eagle Image Sharing, which allows colleagues to easily access and download product images on the company intranet.
If your requirement is just to share the material library on the intranet, you can quickly set it up by visiting the pichome official website in conjunction with phpStudy.
So, if you want to add another requirement on top of accessing the material library on the intranet, allowing colleagues on business trips to also access the material library, what should you do?
Deploy pichome on cloud services? That’s possible, but the material library is several hundred GB and continues to grow. Who can afford that cost?
Is there a technology that can turn the intranet into something accessible from the external network? Yes.
Intranet Penetration#
I always thought "intranet penetration" was used for intranet sharing or VPN tools, but after some study, I confirmed that it is exactly what I was looking for.
A local computer that has been idle and never turned off can serve as a server, allowing the material library built on the intranet to be accessed directly from the external network using an intranet penetration tool.
At first, I successfully deployed this solution phpstudy local quick website setup and external access. If you need a fixed second-level domain name for long-term use, the basic version at 99/year is sufficient. I plan to try other solutions first, and if they don’t work, I will come back to this as my fallback option.
Through the B station intranet penetration explanation video, I learned that there are actually many intranet penetration tools, such as Ngrok, Peanut Shell, NATAPP, FRP, and DingTalk penetration. After comparison, I found a solution that fits my personal needs.
Cloudflare free intranet penetration tutorial is familiar because the xLog blog uses Cloudflare for resolution, the Chinese interface is user-friendly, the brand is reliable, and it allows custom domain names for free.
Deployment Practice#
Note: The entire setup is in VPN mode, and accessing Cloudflare is relatively fast. Cloudflare Zero Trust official documentation If you encounter problems, refer to the official documentation multiple times.
- Usually, by this step, you must have a domain name. There is no need to consider whether to apply for a second-level domain name in advance; just follow the standard steps of Cloudflare to replace the NS resolution, and you should be able to access the main domain normally.
- Assuming Cloudflare has taken over the resolution service for the domain zhuyumin.com, select "Traffic" → "Cloudflare Tunnel" from the left navigation.
- Create a tunnel.
- Fill in the tunnel name.
- Download and install the program on the local computer that needs external access. Note that the installation will just flash by. Next, copy and paste the command below into CMD for installation. If the installation fails, the biggest issue is to ensure you use "Windows PowerShell (Administrator) mode."
- Return to the Tunnels interface; if the Status is HEALTHY, it indicates that the tunnel was created successfully. Click the three dots afterward to enter Configure and set up IP binding.
- Set the parameters for Public Hostname Page. After filling in the Subdomain name, a second-level domain name will be automatically generated, the Domain will automatically pick up the main domain name, and you do not need to fill in the Path; select http for Type, and the URL is the IP of the local computer without needing to fill in the port.
- After saving, you can access the local computer's material library or your own blog through this second-level domain name.
- After successful deployment, the access speed will gradually increase; it may be a bit slow at first.
- The access speed on mobile devices is relatively faster. Cloudflare allows custom domain names and free penetration; what more could you want?
Postscript Insights#
As a programming novice who enjoys tinkering, I didn't even know what intranet penetration meant before this. I was driven by a strange impulse; if it failed, I would just waste some time and effort, so what does it matter?
Since I didn't understand the underlying logic, each step felt like a guessing game. Even after successfully deploying, it still felt vague and confusing.
Looking back, each step seemed to be guided, and there were no particularly serious obstacles that led to giving up. Thanks to repeatedly encountering errors and persisting to try again, there were no special techniques involved.