13d32d274f
* [management] Fence peer status updates with a session token The connect/disconnect path used a best-effort LastSeen-after-streamStart comparison to decide whether a status update should land. Under contention — a re-sync arriving while the previous stream's disconnect was still in flight, or two management replicas seeing the same peer at once — the check was a read-then-decide-then-write window: any UPDATE in between caused the wrong row to be written. The Go-side time.Now() that fed the comparison also drifted under lock contention, since it was captured seconds before the write actually committed. Replace it with an integer-nanosecond fencing token stored alongside the status. Every gRPC sync stream uses its open time (UnixNano) as its token. Connects only land when the incoming token is strictly greater than the stored one; disconnects only land when the incoming token equals the stored one (i.e. we're the stream that owns the current session). Both are single optimistic-locked UPDATEs — no read-then-write, no transaction wrapper. LastSeen is now written by the database itself (CURRENT_TIMESTAMP). The caller never supplies it, so the value always reflects the real moment of the UPDATE rather than the moment the caller queued the work — which was already off by minutes under heavy lock contention. Side effects (geo lookup, peer-login-expiration scheduling, network-map fan-out) are explicitly documented as running after the fence UPDATE commits, never inside it. Geo also skips the update when realIP equals the stored ConnectionIP, dropping a redundant SavePeerLocation call on same-IP reconnects. Tests cover the three semantic cases (matched disconnect lands, stale disconnect dropped, stale connect dropped) plus a 16-goroutine race test that asserts the highest token always wins. * [management] Add SessionStartedAt to peer status updates Stored `SessionStartedAt` for fencing token propagation across goroutines and updated database queries/functions to handle the new field. Removed outdated geolocation handling logic and adjusted tests for concurrency safety. * Rename `peer_status_required_approval` to `peer_status_requires_approval` in SQL store fields
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New: NetBird terraform provider
NetBird combines a configuration-free peer-to-peer private network and a centralized access control system in a single platform, making it easy to create secure private networks for your organization or home.
Connect. NetBird creates a WireGuard-based overlay network that automatically connects your machines over an encrypted tunnel, leaving behind the hassle of opening ports, complex firewall rules, VPN gateways, and so forth.
Secure. NetBird enables secure remote access by applying granular access policies while allowing you to manage them intuitively from a single place. Works universally on any infrastructure.
Open Source Network Security in a Single Platform
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/10cec749-bb56-4ab3-97af-4e38850108d2
Self-Host NetBird (Video)
Key features
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Quickstart with NetBird Cloud
- Download and install NetBird at https://app.netbird.io/install
- Follow the steps to sign-up with Google, Microsoft, GitHub or your email address.
- Check NetBird admin UI.
- Add more machines.
Quickstart with self-hosted NetBird
This is the quickest way to try self-hosted NetBird. It should take around 5 minutes to get started if you already have a public domain and a VM. Follow the Advanced guide with a custom identity provider for installations with different IDPs.
Infrastructure requirements:
- A Linux VM with at least 1CPU and 2GB of memory.
- The VM should be publicly accessible on TCP ports 80 and 443 and UDP port: 3478.
- Public domain name pointing to the VM.
Software requirements:
- Docker installed on the VM with the docker-compose plugin (Docker installation guide) or docker with docker-compose in version 2 or higher.
- jq installed. In most distributions
Usually available in the official repositories and can be installed with
sudo apt install jqorsudo yum install jq - curl installed.
Usually available in the official repositories and can be installed with
sudo apt install curlorsudo yum install curl
Steps
- Download and run the installation script:
export NETBIRD_DOMAIN=netbird.example.com; curl -fsSL https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/releases/latest/download/getting-started.sh | bash
- Once finished, you can manage the resources via
docker-compose
A bit on NetBird internals
- Every machine in the network runs NetBird Agent (or Client) that manages WireGuard.
- Every agent connects to Management Service that holds network state, manages peer IPs, and distributes network updates to agents (peers).
- NetBird agent uses WebRTC ICE implemented in pion/ice library to discover connection candidates when establishing a peer-to-peer connection between machines.
- Connection candidates are discovered with the help of STUN servers.
- Agents negotiate a connection through Signal Service passing p2p encrypted messages with candidates.
- Sometimes the NAT traversal is unsuccessful due to strict NATs (e.g. mobile carrier-grade NAT) and a p2p connection isn't possible. When this occurs the system falls back to a relay server called TURN, and a secure WireGuard tunnel is established via the TURN server.
Coturn is the one that has been successfully used for STUN and TURN in NetBird setups.
See a complete architecture overview for details.
Community projects
- NetBird installer script
- NetBird ansible collection by Dominion Solutions
- netbird-tui — terminal UI for managing NetBird peers, routes, and settings
Note: The main branch may be in an unstable or even broken state during development.
For stable versions, see releases.
Support acknowledgement
In November 2022, NetBird joined the StartUpSecure program sponsored by The Federal Ministry of Education and Research of The Federal Republic of Germany. Together with CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security NetBird brings the security best practices and simplicity to private networking.
Testimonials
We use open-source technologies like WireGuard®, Pion ICE (WebRTC), Coturn, and Rosenpass. We very much appreciate the work these guys are doing and we'd greatly appreciate if you could support them in any way (e.g., by giving a star or a contribution).
Legal
This repository is licensed under BSD-3-Clause license that applies to all parts of the repository except for the directories management/, signal/ and relay/. Those directories are licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3.0 (AGPLv3). See the respective LICENSE files inside each directory.
WireGuard and the WireGuard logo are registered trademarks of Jason A. Donenfeld.