# Plain, Non-Secure REST Interface

**URL:** <https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87>\
**Category:** Feature Request\
**Created:** [April 4, 2016, 10:25am UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87 "2016-04-04T10:25:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Manfred\_Kraft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Manfred\_Kraft](https://forums.losant.com/u/Manfred_Kraft)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 10:25am UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/1 "2016-04-04T10:25:30Z")

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Hi,  
i want to connect some very simple devices to Losant, preferably with a simple HTTP-POST request. They don’t support SSL (or any other) encryption. Is there any support for this?

many thanks in advance,  
Manfred

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**Author:** ![Brandon\_Cannaday](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.losant.com/brandon_cannaday/32/14_2.png) [@Brandon\_Cannaday](https://forums.losant.com/u/Brandon_Cannaday)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 3:28pm UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/2 "2016-04-04T15:28:45Z")

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Our REST interface requires HTTPS. The [MQTT endpoint](https://docs.losant.com/mqtt/overview/) can be used without encryption, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. For situations like this, I recommend using a local gateway - put a more powerful device that can do encryption between your simple device and Losant.

I’d recommend grabbing a Raspberry Pi and installing Nginx on it. The Nginx config would look something like this:

```auto
server {
  listen 8080;

  location / {
       proxy_pass https://api.losant.com;
  }
}

```

You can then connect your simple device to your Raspberry Pi on port 8080 and it will proxy all communications, securely, to Losant’s API. A single Raspberry Pi can likely support hundreds or thousands of devices connected to it when used like this.

We are developing an open-source gateway to solve this exact problem, but that won’t help you now. Our gateway is written in Node.js and we’ll be recommending a Raspberry Pi for the gateway device.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Manfred\_Kraft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Manfred\_Kraft](https://forums.losant.com/u/Manfred_Kraft)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 3:34pm UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/3 "2016-04-04T15:34:11Z")

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Thank you for the quick reply. The point with the mentioned simple devices is, that they are very low-power and cheap, and a lot of them “in the wild”. But i’ll try both options. Thanks, again…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brandon\_Cannaday](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.losant.com/brandon_cannaday/32/14_2.png) [@Brandon\_Cannaday](https://forums.losant.com/u/Brandon_Cannaday)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/4 "2016-04-04T15:45:52Z")

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As for low-power, inexpensive, wifi microcontrollers, we’ve had really good success with the ESP8266. It does support TLS encryption. You can pick up the modules for a couple of bucks each.

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**Author:** ![Manfred\_Kraft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Manfred\_Kraft](https://forums.losant.com/u/Manfred_Kraft)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 4:11pm UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/5 "2016-04-04T16:11:39Z")

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Thanks again. Problem is, we already have this devices in use and they work with the GPRS network, so local proxying is not an option.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brandon\_Cannaday](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.losant.com/brandon_cannaday/32/14_2.png) [@Brandon\_Cannaday](https://forums.losant.com/u/Brandon_Cannaday)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/6 "2016-04-04T16:30:29Z")

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Gotcha. I’d recommend trying the MQTT endpoint. MQTT is less overhead than HTTP anyway. The connect and publish calls require very little data.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brandon\_Cannaday](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.losant.com/brandon_cannaday/32/14_2.png) [@Brandon\_Cannaday](https://forums.losant.com/u/Brandon_Cannaday)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 10:08pm UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/7 "2016-04-05T22:08:00Z")

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We have removed the automatic ssl redirect on the [REST endpoint](https://docs.losant.com/rest-api/overview/). You can now use that endpoint non-secure (although we don’t recommend it).

At a minimum, please ensure you are authenticating using device-level tokens, that way if your traffic is compromised, they can only masquerade as that single device.

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**Author:** ![Michael\_Kuehl](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.losant.com/michael_kuehl/32/99_2.png) [@Michael\_Kuehl](https://forums.losant.com/u/Michael_Kuehl)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2017, 2:35am UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/8 "2017-03-30T02:35:49Z")

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Michael\_Kuehl](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/forums.losant.com/michael_kuehl/32/99_2.png) [@Michael\_Kuehl](https://forums.losant.com/u/Michael_Kuehl)\
**Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 3:27am UTC](https://forums.losant.com/t/plain-non-secure-rest-interface/87/9 "2017-07-01T03:27:58Z")

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