n3n
- Lightweight
- Peer to Peer VPN
- "Distributed Ethernet Switch"
- NAT Piercing
- Userspace tuntap
The n3n VPN creates virtual Ethernet networks.
Description
A virtual network shared between multiple edge nodes in n3n is called a community.
- One or more supernodes: The supernodes work as a cluster of publicly addressable servers that allow edge nodes to discover other nodes. Each supernode can provide services to multiple communities at the same time and generally does not have access decrypt any VPN traffic.
- Multiple edge nodes: The edge daemon provides the VPN interface to the hosts that are joining the network.
n3n tries to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection via UDP between the edge nodes. When this is not possible (usually due to more complex NAT environments), the supernode is also used to relay the packets.
n3n was originally based on an older n2n project and intends to keep protocol compatibility with it.
License
- Any new self-contained tools or modules are licensed GPL-2.0-only.
- Existing code is licensed GPL-3-only.
- There are multiple distinct copyright holders throughout the codebase.
- There is no Contributor Licence Agreement and thus there is no single body that can take ownership of the code and/or change the licensing.