Home Assistant gains another route to an ESPHome device when it cannot open the usual connection: it accepts a connection started by the device instead. The integration and ESPHome client library recognize the incoming session through the device’s existing encryption key.
J. Nick Koston’s work still requires the device to be reachable for its initial setup in Home Assistant. It refuses unknown devices and entries without encryption keys, and needs device firmware that supports outgoing connections. The Home Assistant side adds no setting to manage.