The harness package documents itself as feature-agnostic — "any suite can ask for a live management server" — but three details assume the caller lives in this repo, so the terraform provider's acceptance suite cannot use it and would have to carry a second harness for the same product instead. repoRoot walked up from the working directory to the first go.mod and used it as the Docker build context. From another module that is the caller's own root, where combined/Dockerfile.multistage does not exist. Require the ancestor to be this module, and fall back to asking the go tool where this module's source is. For a dependent that is the extracted module directory of the version it pins, which is the right context: the server it tests against is then built from the same revision as the client library it was compiled against. Geolocation was off unconditionally, in both the container environment and disableGeoliteUpdate. That is right for agent-network ingest, which does not use it, but a suite asserting on location-based posture checks needs the database: management evaluates those rules against it, and a rule it cannot evaluate fails rather than passing without having been checked. StartCombined now takes options, with WithGeolocation to keep the download, and WithServerEnv as the general escape hatch for settings the harness does not model. StartClient pinned a single network alias and set no hostname, so a second agent could not start — the alias collides — and the peer's name was whatever the container got. Both matter to a suite whose fixtures address peers by name: management records the container hostname at registration, so that is the name the peer appears under in the API. WithClientName sets alias and hostname together. All three are additive. StartCombined(ctx) and StartClient(ctx, c, key) still compile and behave as before, which the existing agent-network suite exercises. The options configure a container environment and a config file, both assembled before anything starts, so options_test.go checks them without Docker. A wiring mistake would otherwise surface as a puzzling failure minutes into a container run — and the argument order in the config format string is exactly the kind of thing worth pinning, since a misplaced verb there fails the server's startup.
Start using NetBird at netbird.io
See Documentation
Join our Slack channel or our Community forum
🚀 We are hiring! Join us at https://netbird.io/careers
🤖 NetBird Agent Network (Beta)
Identity-aware access control for AI agents — keyless access to LLM APIs and private resources over the encrypted NetBird tunnel. See
agent-network/or read the docs at netbird.ai.
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.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/10cec749-bb56-4ab3-97af-4e38850108d2
Self-host NetBird (video)
Key features
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 the NetBird admin UI.
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 1 CPU and 2 GB of memory.
- The VM should be publicly accessible on TCP ports 80 and 443 and UDP port 3478.
- A public domain name pointing to the VM.
Software requirements:
- Docker with the Compose plugin (Compose v2 or higher). See the Docker installation guide.
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
A bit on NetBird internals
- Every machine in the network runs the NetBird agent, which manages WireGuard.
- Every agent connects to the Management Service, which holds network state, manages peer IPs, and distributes updates to agents.
- Agents use ICE (via pion/ice) to discover connection candidates for peer-to-peer connections.
- Candidates are discovered with the help of STUN servers.
- Agents negotiate a connection through the Signal Service, exchanging end-to-end encrypted messages with candidates.
- When NAT traversal fails (e.g. mobile carrier-grade NAT) and a direct p2p connection isn't possible, the system falls back to a Relay Service and a secure WireGuard tunnel is established through it.
See a complete architecture overview for details.
Community projects
- NetBird installer script
- netbird-tui - terminal UI for managing NetBird peers, routes, and settings
- caddy-netbird - Caddy plugin that embeds a NetBird client for proxying HTTP and TCP/UDP traffic through NetBird networks
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 the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, NetBird brings security best practices and simplicity to private networking.
Acknowledgements
We build on open-source technologies like WireGuard®, Pion ICE, and Rosenpass. We greatly appreciate the work these projects are doing, and we'd love it if you could support them too (e.g., by starring or contributing).
Legal
This repository is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause license, which 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.



