wesher VS Netmaker

https://github.com/costela/wesher

Wiresmith: Rust, auto-configs clients into a mesh

Maybe take a look at Wesher https://github.com/costela/wesher

I run a Wireguard mesh network with Wesher, and I am pretty sure that there are other projects to automate this. Is there a reason not to use them?

From a purely networking perspective, there are far better solutions than tailscale.

Have a look at full mesh VPNs like:

https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go

https://github.com/gsliepen/tinc

https://github.com/costela/wesher

These build actual mesh networks where every node is equal and can serve as a router for other nodes to resolve difficult network topologies (where some nodes might not be connected to the internet, but do have connections to other nodes with an internet connection).

Sending data through multiple routers is also possible. They also deal with nodes disappearing and change routes accordingly.

tailscale (and similar solutions like netbird) still use a bunch of "proxy servers" for that. You can set them up on intermediate nodes, but that have to be dealt with manually (and you get two kinds of nodes).

There are two factors at play here. The client's public IP actually depends on the gateway they use on accessing the internet. You can disable routing and your clients will keep their public IP and general internet access won't go through the VPS. However, if you want the traffic between "clients" also skip the VPS, then you want a mesh network. wesher and wg-meshconf can help you on configuring them.

Have you considered https://github.com/costela/wesher or does this not fit your use case?

I use Hashicorp Consul and Hashicorp Nomad for service discovery and task scheduling respectively, with wesher for my internal private management network that Consul, Nomad, etc run on to protect the management interfaces. Fabio bridges the gap between the wesher wireguard VPN and the rest of my home network.

How does your solution compare to wesher?

How does it compare to https://github.com/costela/wesher?

Netmaker - Layer 3 peer-to-peer overlay network and private DNS. Similar to Tailscale, but with a self-hosted server/admin UI. Runs kernel WireGuard so very fast. Not FOSS, but the source code is available. Written in Go.

My plan is to set up an EC2 instance and host a VPN, considering options like Netmaker, OpenVPN, or Tailscale. The goal is to connect these devices to the VPN, enabling SSH access from any connected node. This method seems cost-effective(Considering I want to use 100s of devices and potentially 1000s) and straightforward, requiring a simple setup with a sudo apt command on the Raspberry Pi.

I'm wondering if there are any alternative approaches to achieve this. Is something like Netmaker or Tailscale feasible enough? If you have any suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate it.

https://github.com/gravitl/netmaker

Honorable mention:

SuperHighway84 - more of a Usenet-inspired darknet, but I love the concept + the author's personal website:

https://github.com/mrusme/superhighway84

Exciting news to share! Netmaker has officially embraced open source. This momentous decision was unveiled at the Open Source Summit in Europe when the pull request successfully merged, transitioning their server from the SSPL to the widely recognized Apache License 2.0.

While we've encountered some challenges and worked with vendors like Cisco to find solutions, I'm curious about recommendations for SD-WAN providers that are well-suited for SASE users. This includes not only Zscaler but also other options like Netmaker, Palo Alto, Cloudflare, Cisco, and Forcepoint.

Now, my main question is how I can link my DDNS host endpoint with my EC2 instances, allowing only my home network to access them. I've come across a variety of suggestions, such as Netmaker, OpenVPN, Tailscale etc. but I'm curious to hear your opinions on these solutions.

HN is somehow always timely. Currently, these folks expect me to sign a CLA for a one-byte change to their README: https://github.com/gravitl/netmaker/pull/2516