5 ms·

Netbirdio/netbird: Connect devices into a single private WireGuard mesh network

202 points by rcarmo 3y ago

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551686 Raise announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35818522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35818522
thejosh 3y ago
Fantastic! Love seeing more work like this go into Wireguard. I've been using headscale (self-hosted tailscale) for personal use, but having only one machine not running Linux on the network is a bit silly, as Tailscale is userspace, and Wireguard uses very little CPU on Linux.
- animeshjain 3y ago
  can you please explain, why do you need a non-Linux machine on the network?
  - thejosh 3y ago
    Mac laptop and my phone. The idea behind Tailscale is that you can sign in with any device. I can go and create a configuration file for WG, but then it gets longer and longer.
  - j45 3y ago
    A common need is to have android, ios, windows, and mac computers all work, maybe even access a NAS together. And if it's the case, no, they can't use Linux like you.
- j45 3y ago
  I recently switched to Tailscale, and it was magic. It's very easy to recommend it to any non-tech user as well who wants to "connect to home". Well worth paying for in those cases. But, Tailscale had so much magic, that I didn't want to be solely dependant on it, remembering how Docker is turning out. Finding Headscale was a great discovery, and nice that the Tailscale clients already maintained can connect to a separate open-source project that lets you run your own server.
  - sph 3y ago
    I would love and pay for Tailscale if they could solve the battery consumption issue on iOS. The bug report has been open for years now, they created a special TestFlight version with logging enabled for them to track it down, and no news since. If I forget to turn it off, I'm down to 0% battery in 12 hours of standby. https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/3363 https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/3363 I have it installed on all my systems, but I never use it because my use case is accessing my network while I'm out from my phone. One day I might replace it with WireGuard and be done with it. The official WG app doesn't drain my battery.
    - cassianoleal 3y ago
      > If I forget to turn it off At least for me, it's even worse. It's not enough to disconnect on the app, as it's still connected as far as iOS is concerned (check Settings -> VPN). I tried many things to fix that - force-closing the app, switching it off multiple times in settings, etc. The only thing that actually makes the VPN to disconnect and the battery drain to stop is to choose a different VPN profile in Settings.
      - sph 3y ago
        I think that problem might've been fixed recently, but I might be wrong.
        zikduruqe 3y ago
        Version 1.48.1 on iOS has an on-demand setting like Wireguard does. https://i.imgur.com/Orupuu8.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Orupuu8.jpg
        cassianoleal 3y ago
        That's progress but I'm not sure how that helps much unless I select "Do Nothing" on Wifi and Mobile, and set to "detect Magic DNS", but that will only do me any good if I use magic DNS which I don't.
- braginini 3y ago
  You could also try an updated self-hosted Netbird :) https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird-cloud https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird...
nvllsvm 3y ago
Looks promising, but the Android app is closed source. Hard pass until it's source code is released under a FOSS license and buildable+usable without analytics nor prioprietary libraries. https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1109 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1109
- j45 3y ago
  It's still encouraging to see this space get active development. Hopefully all the clients can be freely available.
- preisschild 3y ago
  https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1081#issuecomment-1682421080 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1081#issuecommen... It seems that they plan on open sourcing the app.
  - airtonix 3y ago
    believe it when we see it. unti then. /hardpass
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- braginini 3y ago
  Maintainer here. NetBird is one of these p2p private networking solutions that is truly open-source. Actually, I haven't seen any comparable yet. We haven't yet published the Android code simply because we have coding standards to meet before we open the code to the public. This is mainly about the code structure and tests. We are working on it. We are a tiny team of engineers with a vision to make private networking simple and secure, which is challenging. Therefore, we should prioritize some things over others. But we are getting there! With your support :)
  - jononor 3y ago
    Just do that work in the open? Transparency is just as important a feature of an open source project than the project license (or code quality).
wilhil 3y ago
We are/were an early adopter. It's very promising, but, seriously buggy as of now - DNS keeps randomly dropping/leaking unreliably which was causing us issues and random drops to private resources along with a few other issues. I think we switched to tailscale (I don't look after that side)... it's still a cool solution and think we will be looking at it again in the future.
- fer 3y ago
  > DNS keeps randomly dropping/leaking tbh, I always assumed it wasn't implemented yet; it never worked for me
- braginini 3y ago
  NetBird maintainer here. We did a few improvements recently. When did you try netbird for the last time? Happy to follow-up on the DNS issues in our Slack channel https://join.slack.com/t/netbirdio/shared_invite/zt-vrahf41g-ik1v7fV8du6t0RwxSrJ96A https://join.slack.com/t/netbirdio/shared_invite/zt-vrahf41g...
methou 3y ago
I was kinda expecting some ecmp based on the name (bird). Routing in mesh networking can be somewhat very .... Fun
webcoon 3y ago
This looks awesome! I use a paid VPN mesh service called Tailscale to build k8s clusters which can span across cloud and home setups, but was always frustrated that the Tailscale server component is closed source. Netbird seems to do pretty much the same thing, so maybe I can switch over to it once it's stable enough.
- major568 3y ago
  There's an alternative to tailscale service called headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale (CLI only server compatible with official tailscale clients)
- braginini 3y ago
  There is a new quick NetBird self-hosting guide available :) https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird-cloud https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird...
MayeulC 3y ago
Related, from a few days ago: netmaker https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37142388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37142388 The top comment also mentions a few alternatives. Personally, I use raw wireguard for one-off 1:1 links between servers, headscale+tailscale between some of my devices, and I've toyed with yggdrasil to obtain a roaming public IP, as well as LAN-first connectivity.
tarasglek 3y ago
I was having weird perf issues on openwrt with tailscaled being in the network path. With netbird + direct mode, netbird is only there during connection [re-]establishment. I get much better throughput/latency with netbird on both embedded openwrt and desktop platforms. But yeah, this netbird thing is seriously buggy. For any sort of multi-user setups, I always recommend tailscale, it's much more robust.
- braginini 3y ago
  Hey! Thank you for the feedback! Could you please elaborate on the issues that you are facing? We have quite a few multi-user cases both on the managed and self-hosted version with no issues. Thank you!
  - tarasglek 3y ago
    https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1111 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1111
yolo4553 3y ago
The demo video shows only IPv4, a quick search on the readme does not mention IPv6 at all. The website is served (at least to me) only via IPv4. Is IPv6 supported? Does the controlplane work on IPv6 only networks=
- braginini 3y ago
  It is coming :)
fpinna83 3y ago
Amazing Worked very well to access my k8s private cluster

202 points by rcarmo 3y ago

Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31551686 Raise announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35818522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35818522

thejosh 3y ago

Fantastic! Love seeing more work like this go into Wireguard. I've been using headscale (self-hosted tailscale) for personal use, but having only one machine not running Linux on the network is a bit silly, as Tailscale is userspace, and Wireguard uses very little CPU on Linux.

animeshjain 3y ago
can you please explain, why do you need a non-Linux machine on the network?
- thejosh 3y ago
  Mac laptop and my phone. The idea behind Tailscale is that you can sign in with any device. I can go and create a configuration file for WG, but then it gets longer and longer.
- j45 3y ago
  A common need is to have android, ios, windows, and mac computers all work, maybe even access a NAS together. And if it's the case, no, they can't use Linux like you.
j45 3y ago
I recently switched to Tailscale, and it was magic. It's very easy to recommend it to any non-tech user as well who wants to "connect to home". Well worth paying for in those cases. But, Tailscale had so much magic, that I didn't want to be solely dependant on it, remembering how Docker is turning out. Finding Headscale was a great discovery, and nice that the Tailscale clients already maintained can connect to a separate open-source project that lets you run your own server.
- sph 3y ago
  I would love and pay for Tailscale if they could solve the battery consumption issue on iOS. The bug report has been open for years now, they created a special TestFlight version with logging enabled for them to track it down, and no news since. If I forget to turn it off, I'm down to 0% battery in 12 hours of standby. https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/3363 https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/3363 I have it installed on all my systems, but I never use it because my use case is accessing my network while I'm out from my phone. One day I might replace it with WireGuard and be done with it. The official WG app doesn't drain my battery.
  - cassianoleal 3y ago
    > If I forget to turn it off At least for me, it's even worse. It's not enough to disconnect on the app, as it's still connected as far as iOS is concerned (check Settings -> VPN). I tried many things to fix that - force-closing the app, switching it off multiple times in settings, etc. The only thing that actually makes the VPN to disconnect and the battery drain to stop is to choose a different VPN profile in Settings.
    - sph 3y ago
      I think that problem might've been fixed recently, but I might be wrong.
      - zikduruqe 3y ago
        Version 1.48.1 on iOS has an on-demand setting like Wireguard does. https://i.imgur.com/Orupuu8.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Orupuu8.jpg
        cassianoleal 3y ago
        That's progress but I'm not sure how that helps much unless I select "Do Nothing" on Wifi and Mobile, and set to "detect Magic DNS", but that will only do me any good if I use magic DNS which I don't.
braginini 3y ago
You could also try an updated self-hosted Netbird :) https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird-cloud https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird...

nvllsvm 3y ago

Looks promising, but the Android app is closed source. Hard pass until it's source code is released under a FOSS license and buildable+usable without analytics nor prioprietary libraries. https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1109 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1109

j45 3y ago
It's still encouraging to see this space get active development. Hopefully all the clients can be freely available.
preisschild 3y ago
https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1081#issuecomment-1682421080 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1081#issuecommen... It seems that they plan on open sourcing the app.
- airtonix 3y ago
  believe it when we see it. unti then. /hardpass
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
braginini 3y ago
Maintainer here. NetBird is one of these p2p private networking solutions that is truly open-source. Actually, I haven't seen any comparable yet. We haven't yet published the Android code simply because we have coding standards to meet before we open the code to the public. This is mainly about the code structure and tests. We are working on it. We are a tiny team of engineers with a vision to make private networking simple and secure, which is challenging. Therefore, we should prioritize some things over others. But we are getting there! With your support :)
- jononor 3y ago
  Just do that work in the open? Transparency is just as important a feature of an open source project than the project license (or code quality).

wilhil 3y ago

We are/were an early adopter. It's very promising, but, seriously buggy as of now - DNS keeps randomly dropping/leaking unreliably which was causing us issues and random drops to private resources along with a few other issues. I think we switched to tailscale (I don't look after that side)... it's still a cool solution and think we will be looking at it again in the future.

fer 3y ago
> DNS keeps randomly dropping/leaking tbh, I always assumed it wasn't implemented yet; it never worked for me
braginini 3y ago
NetBird maintainer here. We did a few improvements recently. When did you try netbird for the last time? Happy to follow-up on the DNS issues in our Slack channel https://join.slack.com/t/netbirdio/shared_invite/zt-vrahf41g-ik1v7fV8du6t0RwxSrJ96A https://join.slack.com/t/netbirdio/shared_invite/zt-vrahf41g...

methou 3y ago

I was kinda expecting some ecmp based on the name (bird). Routing in mesh networking can be somewhat very .... Fun

webcoon 3y ago

This looks awesome! I use a paid VPN mesh service called Tailscale to build k8s clusters which can span across cloud and home setups, but was always frustrated that the Tailscale server component is closed source. Netbird seems to do pretty much the same thing, so maybe I can switch over to it once it's stable enough.

major568 3y ago
There's an alternative to tailscale service called headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale https://github.com/juanfont/headscale (CLI only server compatible with official tailscale clients)
braginini 3y ago
There is a new quick NetBird self-hosting guide available :) https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird-cloud https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird#quickstart-with-netbird...

MayeulC 3y ago

Related, from a few days ago: netmaker https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37142388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37142388 The top comment also mentions a few alternatives. Personally, I use raw wireguard for one-off 1:1 links between servers, headscale+tailscale between some of my devices, and I've toyed with yggdrasil to obtain a roaming public IP, as well as LAN-first connectivity.

tarasglek 3y ago

I was having weird perf issues on openwrt with tailscaled being in the network path. With netbird + direct mode, netbird is only there during connection [re-]establishment. I get much better throughput/latency with netbird on both embedded openwrt and desktop platforms. But yeah, this netbird thing is seriously buggy. For any sort of multi-user setups, I always recommend tailscale, it's much more robust.

braginini 3y ago
Hey! Thank you for the feedback! Could you please elaborate on the issues that you are facing? We have quite a few multi-user cases both on the managed and self-hosted version with no issues. Thank you!
- tarasglek 3y ago
  https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1111 https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1111

yolo4553 3y ago

The demo video shows only IPv4, a quick search on the readme does not mention IPv6 at all. The website is served (at least to me) only via IPv4. Is IPv6 supported? Does the controlplane work on IPv6 only networks=

braginini 3y ago
It is coming :)

fpinna83 3y ago

Amazing Worked very well to access my k8s private cluster