[HN Gopher] EasyTier - P2P mesh VPN written in Rust using Tokio
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EasyTier - P2P mesh VPN written in Rust using Tokio
Author : wucke13
Score : 125 points
Date : 2025-05-29 12:25 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (easytier.cn)
(TXT) w3m dump (easytier.cn)
| wucke13 wrote:
| This seems to go into a similar direction like ZeroTier, but
| actually open source. There is almost no discussion of this in
| the western hemisphere, but I'd be interested what people think
| about it.
| jen20 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you mean by "no discussion in the
| western hemisphere"? Zerotier is fairly well known in the US.
| mintplant wrote:
| But EasyTier is not.
| volemo wrote:
| > A simple, decentralized mesh VPN with WireGuard support.
|
| How does it square up against DPI censorship techniques that
| successfully block WireGuard?
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| This is a Chinese project (hosted inside China), so probably
| not very well.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Au contraire, it is usually developers of Chinese origin that
| build some of the widely used anti-censorship techniques &
| protocols.
|
| Ironically, it was American companies that sold firewall tech
| to the CCP: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-internet-
| providers-and-g...
| ladyanita22 wrote:
| I don't think the issue is about the developers being
| Chinese at all.
|
| I think the problem comes mainly from the CCP having direct
| power to pressure the developers.
|
| In any case, I have to say Chinese tech has surely evolved
| impressively.
| conradev wrote:
| Yeah - the shadowsocks developer is Chinese and the
| government went after them for working on an iOS VPN app
| back in the day on GitHub. That was a while ago, before
| the CCP had direct control over the App Store with law.
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| Yes, but they don't host those projects _inside China_.
| This site is hosted inside China and has an ICP number.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't this project (and
| website) essentially illegal in China?
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| VPNs in their basic sense are legal in China, many large
| companies provide them/use them and so on. VPNs _designed
| to bypass the Firewall_ without government approval are a
| subset of VPNs which the police do not like.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| OK so real VPNs are illegal. Then you have a subsets of
| VPNs that are regulated by the CCP and therefor legal.
| And useless for many use-cases.
| adinisom wrote:
| I would assume EasyTier devs use it to connect their
| devices within China so the great firewall isn't
| involved. Attempts to cross the firewall with EasyTier
| are detectable without things like Tor's pluggable
| censorship evasion transports.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Why would hosting this website and creating this project
| be illegal in China?
|
| They're not offering this as a SAAS or something...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Distribution of software that subverts censorship laws.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >China relied on two U.S. companies--Cisco Systems and
| Juniper Networks--to help carry out its network upgrade,
| known as "CN2," in 2004. This upgrade significantly
| increased China's ability to monitor Internet usage. Cisco
| also sold several thousand routers (IHT) used to censor web
| content, and "firm's engineers have helped set it to spot
| 'subversive' key-words in messages."
|
| What's ironic about that? Cisco sold them networking
| equipment and the CCP used it to censor.
| immibis wrote:
| Surely not publicly on government-licensed websites.
| asno3030 wrote:
| From personal experience, the great firewall picks up on
| wireguard usage when tunneling to my home computer (not in
| China) and throttles the connection. I am guessing that this
| would have similar limitations when using wireguard.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| This looks cool.
|
| If every node is both a server and a client then will a lot of
| traffic use my node/server as an exit node?
|
| I see there is a separate list of public servers. Presumably,
| these are people running EasyTier nodes/servers who are willing
| to allow strangers in?
|
| If I start my own node and I wish to connect to the mesh is that
| part of the reason for pubic nodes?
| akie wrote:
| Aren't you making yourself vulnerable to unknowingly sending
| (potentially loads of) illicit traffic from your ip address into
| the world?
|
| I'm not sure if I'd be up for that, to be honest...
| throawayonthe wrote:
| this is more like zerotier/tailscale - sorta a virtual LAN
| thunder-blue-3 wrote:
| it's like someone saw Tor and said "but what if we removed all
| the safeguards?"
| ray023 wrote:
| This is exactly that by thought was. This solves nothing what
| the traditional VPN or TOR is used for. It's like running an
| exit node from your hope IP address. You do not want to do
| that.
| smilliken wrote:
| Like other products in this category, this is for private
| networks, internal to your company or self. I don't think it's
| an intended use case to connect to computers not in your
| control.
|
| It's useful when you have computers that talk to each other
| over the internet, likely without public interfaces, and using
| protocols that may or may not be secure.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| How would this compare to Nebula (performance wise)?
|
| https://github.com/slackhq/nebula
| csomar wrote:
| Anyone familiar with the Chinese tech scene can explain what this
| is at the bottom?
|
| # Zhejiang ICP No. 2024137671-1
|
| It takes you to some government website but it is not clear
| whether this is a business registration or something else.
| detaro wrote:
| You need a government license to operate a website in China,
| and that's their license number.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Wait, really? Even like a personal website? Is it hard to
| get?
| detaro wrote:
| Yes, all websites need it. Non-commercial sites afaik have
| a simpler process.
| immibis wrote:
| It's a totalitarian dictatorship after all.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| A bit similar to Germany where you need an Impressum for
| your website, even for personal websites (though I might be
| wrong on that).
|
| Similar discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/commen
| ts/119ycfv/how_do_you...
| 0xml wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICP_license
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Very interested, I cant seem to access the documentation page:
| https://doc.oee.icu:60009/web/#/625560517/103293282
|
| Do I need to run the service first?
| esafak wrote:
| What are some notable uses of P2P these days? You don't hear
| about it much any more.
|
| I believe P2P rose to prominence two decades ago as a response to
| the cost of bandwidth. I wonder if similar methods could
| effectively overcome the cost of compute for LLMs. Here are two
| projects I found from a quick search:
|
| Serving: https://petals.dev/
|
| Training: https://github.com/learning-at-home/hivemind
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Nintendo Switch multiplayer
|
| *shudders*
| jrm4 wrote:
| Personally (as I mentioned elsewhere) I still use Tinc for my
| devices because I prefer "set the thing up once and never much
| think about it again;"
|
| The loss of a "central server" or whatever never matters.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > What are some notable uses of P2P these days?
|
| Im using it for Payload[1] in for LAN and WAN transfers (if
| possible). Reduce operational costs (especially if you run on
| public clouds and have to pay extortion rates for egress) and
| also you must use it to capitalize on latency/throughput in
| LAN. Moving data from A->server->B means your need multiple
| servers on the edge, which means you kinda need to depend on
| mega-corps. If your destination is closer it's easier for your
| application infra. I'd like to reverse the question, why send
| all data through another machine in the cloud if you don't need
| to?
|
| That said, p2p being flaky and bad is real. It's a self-
| fulfilling prophecy, because middlebox engineers say "let's add
| these layers of garbage and nobody will notice unless they use
| p2p but its so bad who uses it anyway". Well, yeah. It's worse
| because of you! Philosophically, I also think p2p is a
| necessary precondition to a decentralized internet without
| tiers (ie client and server separation).
|
| Anyway, rant aside, you have to currently have a relay backup
| if you need availability. P2P will fail often even with the
| smartest hole punching algorithms. This makes things more
| complicated, because you need a hybrid solution. However, it's
| not as complicated as WebRTC, that thing is an overengineered
| mess. It works, but I don't like the complexity it brings.
|
| [1]: https://payload.app/
| jrm4 wrote:
| Anyone know how this compares to Tinc? I don't much know what
| development on it is like these days, but it for me is one of the
| best "set it and forget it" things I regularly use to keep my
| devices talking to each other.
|
| I'm aware that with things like this you're supposed to use the
| latest and greatest like Wireguard or whatever, but nothing
| really does the p2p thing as easy as Tinc, and given secondary
| encryption measures (e.g. I'm sshing and httpsing to those
| machines) I'm just not worrying much about it right now.
| unquietwiki wrote:
| Given its integration of WireGuard, this might be an open-source
| competitor more to Netmaker than ZeroTier. Not sure how scalable
| EasyTier is for a business use-case...
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Not trying to be xenophobic here, but "peer to peer VPN" and a
| domain ending in ".cn" seems a bit odd, no?
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(page generated 2025-06-02 23:01 UTC)