[p2p-hackers] [FoRK] Hamachi "mediated" peer-to-peer sounds interesting (fwd from meltsner@gmail.com)

[Wes Felter]

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Ken Meltsner <meltsner at gmail.com> -----

> Basically, a way to get around NAT and other router issues for a
> peer-to-peer system, mostly seamlessly integrated as a special network
> driver.  Systems connect to a back end server which relays traffic
> between peers on named private networks.  Sort of P2P meets VPN -- if
> they added HTTPS tunneling, it would run through nearly any corporate
> firewall/proxy server.

(The subject line is a little misleading; almost all P2P now uses 
mediated firewall traversal, so that's hardly noteworthy.)

Hamachi is interesting because it appears to provide NAT/firewall 
traversal for arbitrary unmodified applications; the downside is that a 
Hamachi node can only talk to other Hamachi nodes. Teredo provides NAT 
traversal for any IPv6 application, with the advantage that Teredo nodes 
are full peers on the IPv6 Internet (such as it is).

I wonder why they didn't use IPSec. A simple GUI to set up P2P IPSec 
groups might be interesting.

If Hamachi really uses the 5.0.0.0/8 address block, that's a little 
naughty since IANA has not assigned that block: 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space

-- 
Wes Felter - wesley at felter.org - http://felter.org/wesley/