This is super short post on my experiment with setting up a mesh VPN using tinc.

Why?

• It’s used in creating a VPN out of many small networks that are geographically distributed
• There is no concept of server or client in tinc, so nodes try to talk to each other directly or through other nodes

Actors in the mesh

<name> – name for each actor

• Digital Ocean droplet <externalnyc> – to which all below actors connect to
• Digital Ocean droplet <externalblr>
• Laptop <fedora> (Home LAN)
• RaspberryPi <pi> (Home LAN)

How Actors are connected ?

• externalblr ===> externalnyc
• fedora ===> externalnyc
• pi ===> fedora

Assumption is that except externalnyc all others are behind a NAT/Firewall

IP for each actor in VPN

• externalnyc – 10.0.0.1
• externalblr – 10.0.0.3
• fedora – 10.0.0.2
• pi – 10.0.0.4

Results

• Every actor is able to talk to every other actor
• Access services that are allowed in firewall

Sources

tinc – https://www.tinc-vpn.org/documentation-1.1/Concept-Index.html
Tutorial – https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-tinc-and-set-up-a-basic-vpn-on-ubuntu-14-04