libzt VS GameNetworkingSockets

Compare libzt vs GameNetworkingSockets and see what are their differences.

libzt

Encrypted P2P sockets over ZeroTier (by zerotier)

GameNetworkingSockets

Reliable & unreliable messages over UDP. Robust message fragmentation & reassembly. P2P networking / NAT traversal. Encryption. (by ValveSoftware)
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libzt GameNetworkingSockets
5 35
143 7,818
11.2% 1.3%
6.8 8.4
15 days ago about 1 month ago
C++ C++
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later BSD 3-clause "New" or "Revised" License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

libzt

Posts with mentions or reviews of libzt. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2021-12-05.
  • "Jellyfin remote" with zerotier?
    1 project | /r/jellyfin | 5 Apr 2022
    It would be great if that functionality could be integrated directly into the jellyfin server and apps. libzt has good support for all the languages that jellyfin and it's clients use.
  • What are the most important metrics for measuring cloud and endpoint security?
    5 projects | /r/cybersecurity | 5 Dec 2021
    BlindSPOT: https://blindspotsec.com/ Specific graphic from BlindSPOT: https://blindspotsec.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Failure_Before.jpg How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01J4XYM16/ Monte Carlo simulation approach: https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2020/red-teaming-and-monte-carlo-simulations/ D3FEND: https://d3fend.mitre.org/ ATT&CK mappings: https://github.com/center-for-threat-informed-defense/attack-control-framework-mappings ATT&CK evals: https://attackevals.mitre-engenuity.org/index.html CALDERA: https://github.com/mitre/caldera Offensive Countermeasures: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1974671690/ SPIFFE: https://spiffe.io/ SPIRE: https://github.com/spiffe/spire Zerotier: https://www.zerotier.com/ Zerotier libzt: https://github.com/zerotier/libzt
  • I created a small game. Is it possible to make it multiplayer with ZeroTier?
    1 project | /r/zerotier | 28 Nov 2021
    Basically you have to make it work within the LAN yourself, then you can use Zerotier (or even libzt) to make it work over the internet.
  • Use case for zt - managed IT services provider
    1 project | /r/zerotier | 7 Jul 2021
  • How to verify membership in a private Peer to Peer network with flask?
    1 project | /r/flask | 26 Dec 2020
    Take a look at zerotier it's open source, they offer a free tier and you can even bake it directly into your app(they have a library on GitHub lizbt. Unless you are willing to become a security analyst don't roll your own crypto it's never worth it, use a vpn or something https based.

GameNetworkingSockets

Posts with mentions or reviews of GameNetworkingSockets. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-07-11.
  • How are game servers financed
    1 project | /r/gamedev | 6 Dec 2023
    Steam does have a NAT traversal/punchthrough service too. It's apparently usable without Steam according to their README on https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets but honestly the only easy to use implementation I know is in Facepunch.Steamworks which requires a SteamID to initialize
  • Microsoft wins FTC fight to buy Activision Blizzard
    3 projects | /r/gaming | 11 Jul 2023
    Halo was mostly all about single player and early multiplayer/local multiplayer but their online netcode has sucked since Blood Gulch. Lots of games do networking horribly, I have been in gamedev making networking and I hate most of what people do. The ones that have a clean natting, based on enet style reliable UDP channels, RakNet style punch are better (RakNet was good until Facebook bought it). It has come a long way but also fallen back. Valve source netcode (on github) is probably the best and you can check it out here. They started with the best in Quake networking, then to Source.
  • Steam is very good, but I do wish for more effort in the competition.
    1 project | /r/pcmasterrace | 16 Mar 2023
    There are some general APIs that are tied to Steam, like some networking stuff (even then there's an open source library), but the devs are not required to use any of those. If the devs chose to develop exclusively for steam and use their libraries, then that's their own decision.
  • I FIGURED OUT NETWORKING
    2 projects | /r/godot | 15 Mar 2023
    Keep in mind that if you do go the GodotSteam route, there's GameNetworkingSockets from valve that doesn't have the requirement of needing Steam that you can use for releasing on other platforms. It has the same interface as the Steamworks SDK without requiring the Steamworks SDK.
  • Peer to Peer online multiplayer?
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 18 Feb 2023
    Their UDP-but-connection-based game networking protocol can be used completely separetely from Steam (it also supports encryption). I think that does not include their relay networking solution, but still.. maybe it's helpful. They also have a TCP-like interface to make it easy to plug into an existing solution.
  • What kind of person do I need to find to get help with this issue?
    1 project | /r/gamedev | 1 Feb 2023
    You can also use the non-Steam parts of that library in any game in case you don't just release on Steam (have a look at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets )
  • Multiplayer game packaging
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 16 Jan 2023
    If you want to go the route of using a raw protocol and packing your messages yourself, I suggest to at least have a look at Valve's GameNetworkingSockets either for inspiration of what you might need or even to just use the library: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/GameNetworkingSockets
  • does it cost money to have a small coop server?
    2 projects | /r/gamedev | 26 Dec 2022
    There is early NAT piercing support in Valve's GameNetworkingSockets. Check out:
  • What network messaging library do you recommend?
    6 projects | /r/cpp | 6 Dec 2022
    You can also try Valve's GameNetworkingSockets with a serialization of your choice.
  • The Riftbreaker adds Steam Workshop Support, AMD FSR 2.1 support, Optimized CPU performance and more
    1 project | /r/pcgaming | 18 Nov 2022

What are some alternatives?

When comparing libzt and GameNetworkingSockets you can also consider the following projects:

libdatachannel - C/C++ WebRTC network library featuring Data Channels, Media Transport, and WebSockets

nakama - Distributed server for social and realtime games and apps.

ZeroTier - A Smart Ethernet Switch for Earth

netcode.io - A protocol for secure client/server connections over UDP

spire - The SPIFFE Runtime Environment

Game-Networking-Resources - A Curated List of Game Network Programming Resources [Moved to: https://github.com/ThusWroteNomad/GameNetworkingResources]

tinyfecVPN - A VPN Designed for Lossy Links, with Build-in Forward Error Correction(FEC) Support. Improves your Network Quality on a High-latency Lossy Link.

Proton - Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components

turbo-beep - Peer to peer file sharing and messaging between different networks including server acting as a mediator (TCP hole punching).

GloSC - Tool for using the Steam-Controller as systemwide XInput controller alongside a global overlay [Moved to: https://github.com/Thracky/GlosSI]

husarnet - Husarnet is a Peer-to-Peer VPN to connect your laptops, servers and microcontrollers over the Internet with zero configuration.

GlosSI - Note that I am not currently contributing to GlosSI. This fork is only here just in case I do decide to contribute again.