How to make nodes on a virtual private network easily communicate?

Help IPFS
1

Hi !

I’m really interested in peer-to-peer technologies and in particular IPFS.

I host a server in my home network and I also have a server inside my school, as a project with other students.

Seeing how difficult it was to create connections between servers behind multiple symetric NATs, I decided to use zerotier.

So on all my machines, I have a virtual network interface running with ips (say 10.242.0.1/5)

Is it possible to use these addresses with ipfs, to use this route if this is the shortest one ?
Do I need to create a cluster to manage these nodes ?

Thanks for your help !

2

Hi @rambip , this scenario is exactly what libp2p is for. I am not deep into the technical capabilities yet, but please take a look at this. Hole punching in libp2p - Overcoming Firewalls | IPFS Blog & News

3

Looking forward to see if this is able to solve your problem. @rambip

4

Thank’s for the link, it’s really interesting.

However this does not solve my issue:

There are situations in which hole punching will not work, most notably when one of the nodes is behind a symmetric NAT.

But it seems like what I was after is a relay node: I will look into that.

5

Yes :+1: you are on the right track! Because if you’ve had success with zerotier vl1 which is libp2p then you aren’t worried about that you need them (your nodes) to know and communicate as trusted peers. At times a peer can act as a proxy of sorts and switch roles. Like superseed or super-peer ? :sweat_smile:
Anyway some peer can get updated and pass the word. The main thing is that you need to make sure you have them iterated and defined clearly so little or no arbitrary actions requiring logic. :grimacing::rofl: