You need to have a public IP assigned to your router (it doesn’t matter if it changes dynamically), not everybody has one since some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use a NAT3 configuration, which basically means that you share a public IP with a group of their clients and there will be no means to map an HTTP request to your home server, however, it is possible that you can get your NAT configuration changed if you call your ISP and request for a public IP so you might want to give it a try. I’m writing this article under the assumption that you already have Shiny and/or RStudio server properly installed on a computer at home (if you haven’t, you can check out the other articles in my blog for inspiration). Now, I’m not going to lie to you telling you that this article is going to give you detailed instructions on how to do it with your specific router because it would be virtually impossible, each router brand (an even model) has a different management interface, I can only give you the required steps along with an example using the router I have at home, although, generally speaking, the procedure involves the same steps regardless of the specific router model you have, so with a little effort on your part you should be able to figure out how to make it work with your own router. The solution is to expose your server to the public internet by forwarding incoming traffic to the corresponding port in your server.

You have installed Shiny and/or RStudio server in your home computer and it works great as long as you are connected to your local network, however, you can’t access it from other locations, What can you do? ⚠️ Some assembly required! This project is going to require you to investigate the specifics of your network equipment on your own.

Configure Port Forwarding in your Router.

Rstudioserver