ZeroTier

ZeroTier One
Developer(s)	ZeroTier Inc.
Stable release	1.6.4 / December 1, 2021; 54 days ago
Operating system	Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Linux on ARM
Type	SD-WAN, P2P, VPN
License	Business Source License (Free for personal use. Enterprise pricing available); formerly GPLv3
Website	https://www.zerotier.com

ZeroTier, Inc
Type	Private
Industry	Computer networking; Software-defined networking;
Founded	2011; 11 years ago
Founder	Adam Ierymenko
Headquarters	Irvine, California, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Adam Ierymenko (CEO);
Products	ZeroTier One; Central; libzt (SDK); LF (pronounced "aleph");
Website	zerotier.com

ZeroTier Inc. is a software company with a freemium business model based in Irvine, California. ZeroTier provides proprietary software, SDKs^[1] and commercial products and services to create and manage virtual software defined networks. The company's flagship end-user product ZeroTier One^[2] is a client application that enables devices such as PCs, phones, servers and embedded devices to securely connect to peer-to-peer virtual networks.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Software tools[]

ZeroTier provides a suite of proprietary tools, licensed under a Business Source License 1.1,^[7] intended to support development and deployment of virtual data centers:

The main product line consists of these following tools:

ZeroTier One, first released in 2014,^[8] a portable client application that provides connectivity to public or private virtual networks.
Central, a web-based UI portal for managing virtual networks.
libzt (SDK), a linkable library that provides the functionality of ZeroTier One but that can be embedded in applications or services.
LF (pronounced "aleph"), a fully decentralized fully replicated key/value store.

Client[]

The ZeroTier client is used to connect to virtual networks previously created in the ZeroTier Central web-based UI. Endpoint connections are peer-to-peer and end-to-end encrypted. STUN and hole punching are used to establish direct connections between peers behind NAT. Direct connection route discovery is made with the help of a global network of root servers via a mechanism similar to ICE in WebRTC.

Controller[]

Virtual networks are created and managed using a ZeroTier controller. Management is done using an API, proprietary web-based UI (ZeroTier Central), open-source web-based^[9]^[10] or CLI^[11] alternative. Using root servers other than those hosted by ZeroTier Inc. is impeded by the software's license.

Security[]

The following considerations apply to ZeroTier's use as an SDWAN or VPN application:

Asymmetric public key encryption is Curve25519, a 256-bit elliptic curve variant.
All traffic is encrypted end to end on OSI layer 1 using 256-bit Salsa20 and authenticated using the Poly1305 message authentication (MAC) algorithm.^[12] MAC is computed after encryption (encrypt-then-MAC) and the cipher/MAC composition used is identical to the NaCl reference implementation.^[13]

Packages[]

ZeroTier One is available on multiple platforms and in multiple forms:

Microsoft Windows installer (.msi)
Apple Macintosh (.pkg)
iOS for iPhone/iPad/iPod
Docker^[14]
Source code on GitHub^[2]
Linux binaries (DEB & RPM)
Linux snap package (works across distributions)
Linux library
Android App on Google Play^[15]
Qnap (.qpkg)
Synology packages (.spk)
Western Digital MyCloud NAS EX2, EX4, EX2 Ultra (.bin)
FreeBSD has a port and a package
OpenWRT has a community maintained port on GitHub

Similar projects[]

References[]

^ Source code repositories
^ ^a ^b ZeroTier One
^ ""ZeroTier" that allows you to connect Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS with VPN without difficult setting". GIGAZINE.net.
^ "Peer-to-peer-based VPN alternatives". Linux-Magazine.com.
^ Goethals, Tom; Kerkhove, Dwight; Volckaert, Bruno; De Turck, Filip (October 21–25, 2019). Scalability evaluation of VPN technologies for secure container networking (PDF). 15th International Conference on Network and Service Management, CNSM 2019. Halifax, Canada.
^ "Release VERSION 1.8.4 · zerotier/ZeroTierOne".
^ "LICENSE.txt". Retrieved 2021-01-01.
^ "Release VERSION 0.9.2: · zerotier/ZeroTierOne".
^ zt-panel — ZeroTier controller panel built with vue.js
^ ZeroTier controller webinterface ztnui
^ ZeroTier Network Controller in Python
^ ZeroTier Cryptography
^ ZeroTier Manual: Cryptography
^ ZeroTier Docker container page
^ ZeroTier One Google Play Store page

External links[]

TeamViewer VPN Linux-to-Windows equivalent

[ZTRepos-1] Source code repositories

[ZTORepo-2] ZeroTier One

[3] ""ZeroTier" that allows you to connect Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS with VPN without difficult setting". GIGAZINE.net.

[4] "Peer-to-peer-based VPN alternatives". Linux-Magazine.com.

[5] Goethals, Tom; Kerkhove, Dwight; Volckaert, Bruno; De Turck, Filip (October 21–25, 2019). Scalability evaluation of VPN technologies for secure container networking (PDF). 15th International Conference on Network and Service Management, CNSM 2019. Halifax, Canada.

[6] "Release VERSION 1.8.4 · zerotier/ZeroTierOne".

[7] "LICENSE.txt". Retrieved 2021-01-01.

[8] "Release VERSION 0.9.2: · zerotier/ZeroTierOne".

[9] zt-panel — ZeroTier controller panel built with vue.js

[10] ZeroTier controller webinterface ztnui

[11] ZeroTier Network Controller in Python

[12] ZeroTier Cryptography

[13] ZeroTier Manual: Cryptography

[14] ZeroTier Docker container page

[15] ZeroTier One Google Play Store page

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