import {Note} from "@/components/mdx" import {HowToGuides} from "@/components/How-To-Guides" import {AboutNetbird} from "@/components/AboutNetbird" export const description = 'Learn everything there is to know about NetBird.' # Introduction to NetBird

high-level-dia

NetBird is an Open-Source Zero Trust Networking platform that allows you to create secure private networks for your organization or home. We designed NetBird to be simple and fast, requiring near-zero configuration effort and leaving behind the hassle of opening ports, complex firewall rules, VPN gateways, etc. NetBird is an **[open-source](https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird)** project and can be self-hosted. See a comparison between the self-hosted and cloud-hosted versions [here](/selfhosted/self-hosted-vs-cloud-netbird). There is no centralized VPN server with NetBird - your computers, devices, machines, and servers connect to each other directly over a fast encrypted tunnel. It creates a high-performance point-to-point [WireGuard®](https://www.wireguard.com/) overlay network that connects machines running anywhere in just a few clicks. It literally takes less than 5 minutes to deploy a secure point-to-point VPN with NetBird.
## NetBird on Lawrence Systems