ZeroTier Review

dafyre

@quicky2g said:

@travisdh1 said:

@dafyre said:

@travisdh1 said:

I'm really liking how easy it is to setup. Just want to see some security review by a trusted security person before I go ahead and roll it out. Anyone seen a review on it from someone like Steve Gibson, Brian Krebs, or the like?

If you haven't read up in the FAQ yet, check it out here: https://www.zerotier.com/tech_faq.shtml -- especially the security section.

What kind of use case are you seeing for it?

I've got two locations, one with the worst "high-speed" internet you're likely to find outside of satellite (good riddance to satellite!) 1 vm host and 1 backup target at each location. Ether XenServer or ProxMox running on the servers. I'm thinking I'll be able to manage most things at both sites with a jumpbox vm. Maybe even make xrdp available as well, tho that would be painful with the DSL connection (756kb/250kb actual measured 600kb/300kb.)

ZeroTier must use some kind of compression so might help with your speed issues. I have 5mbps upload at home. Did an upload test with iPerf between my house and my work office and saw 5mbps with Hamachi:

Did the same test with ZeroTier between the same endpoints:

That makes me go "What is going on here, something is not right."

I'm going to tag @adam-ierymenko and see what his take on that is. He's one of the ZT Guys.

dafyre

@dafyre said:

@travisdh1 said:

@quicky2g said:

@travisdh1 said:

@dafyre said:

@travisdh1 said:

I'm really liking how easy it is to setup. Just want to see some security review by a trusted security person before I go ahead and roll it out. Anyone seen a review on it from someone like Steve Gibson, Brian Krebs, or the like?

If you haven't read up in the FAQ yet, check it out here: https://www.zerotier.com/tech_faq.shtml -- especially the security section.

What kind of use case are you seeing for it?

I've got two locations, one with the worst "high-speed" internet you're likely to find outside of satellite (good riddance to satellite!) 1 vm host and 1 backup target at each location. Ether XenServer or ProxMox running on the servers. I'm thinking I'll be able to manage most things at both sites with a jumpbox vm. Maybe even make xrdp available as well, tho that would be painful with the DSL connection (756kb/250kb actual measured 600kb/300kb.)

ZeroTier must use some kind of compression so might help with your speed issues. I have 5mbps upload at home. Did an upload test with iPerf between my house and my work office and saw 5mbps with Hamachi:

Did the same test with ZeroTier between the same endpoints:

That makes me go "What is going on here, something is not right."

I'm going to tag @adam-ierymenko and see what his take on that is. He's one of the ZT Guys.

Microsoft's RDP as well as X2Go work great over ZT.

wrx7m

I need a distraction from other things I am working on today and I was thinking about trying to stand up a zero tier controller in a VM. Which linux distro should I use?

dafyre

@wrx7m said:

I need a distraction from other things I am working on today and I was thinking about trying to stand up a zero tier connector in a VM. Which linux distro should I use?

Yes, lol.

Pretty much any of them will work. I tend to favor Ubuntu.

wrx7m

I want something as bare bones as possible, with as little setup as possible to get to the actual task of zerotier installation and config.

scottalanmiller

@wrx7m said:

I need a distraction from other things I am working on today and I was thinking about trying to stand up a zero tier controller in a VM. Which linux distro should I use?

CentOS, Suse Leap and Ubuntu would be my suggestions.

scottalanmiller

@wrx7m said:

I want something as bare bones as possible, with as little setup as possible to get to the actual task of zerotier installation and config.

All three that I mentioned are extremely lean by default.

wrx7m

@scottalanmiller Well I have worked with CentOS and Ubuntu before but not Suse Leap. Hmm. I might try it out.

And when I say worked with, I mean I have setup things like cacti, nagios, openvpn and some others for testing on various distros and versions. Other than that I don't know nearly enough about linux.

stacksofplates

@wrx7m said:

I need a distraction from other things I am working on today and I was thinking about trying to stand up a zero tier controller in a VM. Which linux distro should I use?

I'm using CentOS 7

dafyre

@wrx7m If you can set up things like Cacti, Nagios, and OpenVPN, you should be able to get ZeroTier up and going without too much of a problem.

Are you going to build your own controller, or use their hosted one (free for up to 10 devices) ?

stacksofplates

It's really easy to set up and use. It uses sqlite so backups are really easy. You can even just tar the /var/lib/zerotier-one folder.

wrx7m

@dafyre I want to build my own controller. That is the point of the "project"

I have tested the hosted one and like the concept. Since the controller can also run the client, can I set it up as a gateway?

stacksofplates

@wrx7m said:

@dafyre I want to build my own controller. That is the point of the "project"

I have tested the hosted one and like the concept. Since the controller can also run the client, can I set it up as a gateway?

You can. Just enable IP forwarding and add your routes.

wrx7m

@johnhooks Would tarring the folder be a sufficient backup for the config?

quicky2g

@scottalanmiller said:

@wrx7m said:

I need a distraction from other things I am working on today and I was thinking about trying to stand up a zero tier controller in a VM. Which linux distro should I use?

CentOS, Suse Leap and Ubuntu would be my suggestions.

Wasn't too bad on Ubuntu server:

Dependencies for build

sudo apt-get install git make gcc g++ libsqlite3-dev

For API and script stuff

sudo apt-get install curl php5-cli php5-curl

Install

git clone https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne.git
cd ZeroTierOne
make ZT_ENABLE_NETWORK_CONTROLLER=1 installer
sudo ./ZeroTierOneInstaller-linux-x64-1_1_2
sudo service zerotier-one restart

stacksofplates

@wrx7m said:

@johnhooks Would tarring the folder be a sufficient backup for the config?

Yup. At least I haven't had any issues doing it. I've tested it out a few times.

wrx7m

I decided to go with Ubuntu mostly because of @quicky2g posting the screen captures

quicky2g

@wrx7m said:

I decided to go with Ubuntu mostly because of @quicky2g posting the screen captures

Happy to help! I only tried doing the server because of @dafyre and his awesome scripts!

wrx7m

Should I create a new thread for this? Got through the installation and when I ran zerotier-cli /controller to verify installation, I got "missing authentication token and authtoken.secret not found (or readable) in /var/lib/zerotier-one". I tried restarting the zerotier service and also a full reboot of the ubuntu server.

EDIT: I did check the contents of the aforementioned directory and did see the authtoken.secret file but not sure what the other would be if it weren't the same thing...

scottalanmiller

Yeah, if you have a question, make a new thread and mark as a question, too.