VpnCloud - Peer-to-Peer VPN

VpnCloud is a simple VPN over UDP. It creates a virtual network interface on the host and forwards all received data via UDP to the destination. VpnCloud establishes a fully-meshed VPN network in a peer-to-peer manner. It can work on TUN devices (IP based) and TAP devices (Ethernet based). Tunneling traffic between two nodes can be as easy as:

   $> vpncloud -c REMOTE_HOST:PORT --ifup 'ifconfig $IFNAME 10.0.0.1/24 mtu 1400 up'

For more information, please see the Website.

Project Status

This project is still under development but has reached a somewhat stable state. VpnCloud features the following functionality:

• Setting up tunnels between two networks via Ethernet (TAP) and IP (TUN)
• Connecting multiple networks with multiple forwarding behaviors (Hub, Switch, Router)
• Encrypted connections
• Automatic peer-to-peer meshing, no central servers
• NAT and (limited) firewall traversal using hole punching
• Automatic reconnecting when connections are lost
• Non-native forwarding modes, e.g. IP based learning switch and prefix routed Ethernet networks.
• High throughput and low additional latency (see performance page)
• Support for tunneled VLans (TAP device)
• Option to hide protocol header
• Automatic port forwarding via UPnP
• Support for publishing beacons to help nodes find each others
• Support for statsd monitoring

Installing

Compiling from source

Prerequisites: Git, Cargo, asciidoctor

The checked-out code can be compiled with cargo build or cargo build --release (release version). The binary could then be found in target/release/vpncloud.

The tests can be run via cargo test.

Cross-Compiling & packaging

Please see the builder folder.

Contributions welcome

There are several areas in which still some work has to be done and where contributions are very welcome:

• Linux packages: VpnCloud is stable enough to be packaged for Linux distributions. Maintainers who want to package VpnCloud are very welcome.
• Security review: The security has been implemented with strong security primitives but it would be great if a cryptography expert could verify the system.
• Feedback on use cases: Some feedback on how VpnCloud is being used and maybe some tutorials covering common use cases would be nice.

Semantic Versioning

This project uses semantic versioning.