Port forwarding certainly works in some cases, but it can feel limited when the goal is to host websites. With just forwarding, managing multiple domains or virtual hosts gets awkward. By contrast, an IPv4 reverse proxy (for example, using Nginx or HAProxy at the provider’s edge) could accept connections on IPv4 and pass them over IPv6 to the VPS. That would make it much simpler for end users to run websites on IPv6-only servers without extra layers of infrastructure on their own.

So I’m curious:
1. Since IPv4 port forwarding is already offered, why isn’t reverse proxying for HTTP/HTTPS more common?
2. Are there technical challenges or scaling issues that make it impractical?
3. Or is it simply that demand hasn’t been strong enough for providers to implement it?

I’d be interested to hear if anyone knows the reasoning behind this, or if providers themselves have considered it, I’d really like to hear from you on this. Because from my point of view, for website hosting, IPv4 reverse proxying would make IPv6-only offerings far more appealing to everyone, since IPv6 is still not offered by many ISPs.

We open sourced our reverse proxy, delorean, which is used live on the IPv6rs network. Delorean receives HTTP or TLS traffic via IPv4 and if a suitable IPv6 for the same name is found, routes it to said IPv6 IP.

This is how we provide IPv4 ingress to our users' websites. We hope you find this free open source software useful!

[1] E.g., freedom of speech, freedom of access to information, etc.