Can Netbird or Nebula perform at the edge? (like Tailscale)

[luckylinux]

You can do exactly that with a single virtual server at any cloud provider, connect all your locations via e.g. WireGuard and have a self hosted self managed transparent solution. You will have to pay about a fiver per month for that virtual server.

I would never use any "VPN provider" because I care about my privacy.

Hi Patrick. Would you have some specific guide in Mind ?

I attempting to do this since several Months but, even forgetting the "funnel-like" Feature, it always ends up not working as it's supposed to be (or in my Case ... not at all).

- I tried Headscale + Tailscale (basically no support since they claim Headscale is not supported and my Android Phone won't use the Set DNS Servers over VPN).

- I tried Netbird (stuck at installation with either Authentik or Keycloak), never even get to have the Web Panel showing up

[Gauss23]

I think Patrick means to use the tools that are already there: WireGuard.

You rent a VPS at your trusted VPS host and let this be the WireGuard hub. All your other locations connect to this hub and traffic is distributed as needed/configured.

I have this currently in place. Some of my locations also have "old" IPsec tunnels between each other. But I want to get rid off those. I could use WireGuard but then I stumbled across Netbird and I'm directly a huge fan of it.

It leverages the idea of Zero Trust, which I definitely prefer as boundaries are vanishing more and more. In a hybrid environment with multi-cloud and multiple On-Prem locations it gives you the best approach to connect everything with each other. And the best part is: the hub concept is only used, when a direct connection is not possible. Otherwise the spokes are connecting directly to each other.

I don't understand why you didn't succeed in getting Netbird up and running. I'm using it with Authentik and used the script that was provided. No issues at all.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I think Patrick means to use the tools that are already there: WireGuard.

You rent a VPS at your trusted VPS host and let this be the WireGuard hub. All your other locations connect to this hub and traffic is distributed as needed/configured.

Exactly.

E.g. in my FreeBSD 14.1 VPS at vulture.com: /usr/local/etc/wireguard/wg0.conf

Code Select Expand


[Interface]
Address = 192.168.254.1/24,2003:a:d59:3840::1/64
PrivateKey = *********
ListenPort = 51820

# Peer 1
[Peer]
PublicKey = *********
AllowedIPs = 192.168.254.2/32,2003:a:d59:3840::2/128

# Peer 2
[Peer]
PublicKey = *********
AllowedIPs = 192.168.254.254/32,2003:a:d59:3840::254/128

[...]


Connect as many peers as you like. If you want to route entire networks to specific peers just add them to the "AllowedIPs" statements. Configure the peers in a matching fashion, done.

I don't know what for one would need a "VPN service". Plus, I don't trust them.

To perform outbound NAT I use /etc/pf.conf:

Code Select Expand


nat on vtnet0 inet from 192.168.254.0/24 to any -> ww.xx.yy.zz
nat on vtnet0 inet6 from 2003:a:d59:3840::/64 to any -> dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef

pass all no state


You can add inbound port forwarding or e.g. a Caddy reverse proxy with Letsencrypt as you like.

[luckylinux]

I think Patrick means to use the tools that are already there: WireGuard.

You rent a VPS at your trusted VPS host and let this be the WireGuard hub. All your other locations connect to this hub and traffic is distributed as needed/configured.

Exactly.

E.g. in my FreeBSD 14.1 VPS at vulture.com: /usr/local/etc/wireguard/wg0.conf

Code Select Expand


[Interface]
Address = 192.168.254.1/24,2003:a:d59:3840::1/64
PrivateKey = *********
ListenPort = 51820

# Peer 1
[Peer]
PublicKey = *********
AllowedIPs = 192.168.254.2/32,2003:a:d59:3840::2/128

# Peer 2
[Peer]
PublicKey = *********
AllowedIPs = 192.168.254.254/32,2003:a:d59:3840::254/128

[...]


Connect as many peers as you like. If you want to route entire networks to specific peers just add them to the "AllowedIPs" statements. Configure the peers in a matching fashion, done.

I don't know what for one would need a "VPN service". Plus, I don't trust them.

To perform outbound NAT I use /etc/pf.conf:

Code Select Expand


nat on vtnet0 inet from 192.168.254.0/24 to any -> ww.xx.yy.zz
nat on vtnet0 inet6 from 2003:a:d59:3840::/64 to any -> dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef:dead:beef

pass all no state


You can add inbound port forwarding or e.g. a Caddy reverse proxy with Letsencrypt as you like.

Yeah I was basically out of Options now that I tried for several Months so I just tried directly with Wireguard from an iPhone and Android Phone to VPN directly to my Home OPNsense (double NAT & Port Forwarding) and set manually the DNS Servers to 192.168.1.xxx etc. After fixing Outbound NAT, it worked quite well (ironically almost better on iPhone compared to Android ...)  :D.

[luckylinux]

I think Patrick means to use the tools that are already there: WireGuard.

You rent a VPS at your trusted VPS host and let this be the WireGuard hub. All your other locations connect to this hub and traffic is distributed as needed/configured.

I have this currently in place. Some of my locations also have "old" IPsec tunnels between each other. But I want to get rid off those. I could use WireGuard but then I stumbled across Netbird and I'm directly a huge fan of it.

It leverages the idea of Zero Trust, which I definitely prefer as boundaries are vanishing more and more. In a hybrid environment with multi-cloud and multiple On-Prem locations it gives you the best approach to connect everything with each other. And the best part is: the hub concept is only used, when a direct connection is not possible. Otherwise the spokes are connecting directly to each other.

I don't understand why you didn't succeed in getting Netbird up and running. I'm using it with Authentik and used the script that was provided. No issues at all.

Netbird + Authentik: https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1684
Netbird + Keycloak: https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/1715

When the Logs don't say much [very clearly] and the Web UI doesn't even show up (well it shows an empty Page but that's completely useless), then it's a bit difficult to go forward.

I finally managed with Wireguard on its own Manually, so that's Nice. But netbird would be more convenient I guess.

KISS with Wireguard only or Wireguard + Netbird at the "Price" of having a bigger ecosystem that can break more easily ? Uhm ...

[Gauss23]

KISS with Wireguard only or Wireguard + Netbird at the "Price" of having a bigger ecosystem that can break more easily ? Uhm ...

I just saw, that I use Netbird with the default IdP Zitadel and not Authentik or Keycloak. Used the provided script and it was running out of the box.
Of course you add another service (at least self hosted if you want), but I think you gain a lot of features, like Zero-Trust for your clients.

Configuring connections to one single hub is fairly easy. If your central WireGuard hub goes down, you're lost, too.

Connecting all the spokes in a peer-to-peer manner is another story, if you have more than 4 spokes: that's 6 spoke connections and one to the hub, with 5 spokes, it's already 10 connections+ the hub.

With Netbird you're able to configure multiple routes to the same destination, if you want. I think OPNsense and Netbird are a perfect match here.

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Connecting all the spokes in a peer-to-peer manner is another story, if you have more than 4 spokes: that's 6 spoke connections and one to the hub, with 5 spokes, it's already 10 connections+ the hub.

By the book that's a full mesh, not a hub and spoke topology. In the latter everything goes through the hub.

But you are right, the number of connections is O(n^2) - n * (n - 1) / 2 precisely. Just count the hub as another node.

It's hard to believe that this was the real implementation of Neutron, the network fabric in OpenStack. A full mesh of GRE tunnels. I wonder if that is still the case ...?  ::)

[luckylinux]

KISS with Wireguard only or Wireguard + Netbird at the "Price" of having a bigger ecosystem that can break more easily ? Uhm ...

I just saw, that I use Netbird with the default IdP Zitadel and not Authentik or Keycloak. Used the provided script and it was running out of the box.
Of course you add another service (at least self hosted if you want), but I think you gain a lot of features, like Zero-Trust for your clients.

Configuring connections to one single hub is fairly easy. If your central WireGuard hub goes down, you're lost, too.

Connecting all the spokes in a peer-to-peer manner is another story, if you have more than 4 spokes: that's 6 spoke connections and one to the hub, with 5 spokes, it's already 10 connections+ the hub.

With Netbird you're able to configure multiple routes to the same destination, if you want. I think OPNsense and Netbird are a perfect match here.

Good to know that's also a Feature Netbird provides  :). If only it would work in my case  :(.

As for Zitadel, that's the third Attempt I did back then on my Hetzner VPS (after Authentik and Keycloak) and it would NOT work at all. Zitadel was such a Memory Hog that I believe it triggered the OOM Killer due to excessive RAM Usage. Anyways, not an Option on a low CPU/RAM VPS. I have a dedicated Server now with several KVM Virtual Machines, so I could try that.

But I really liked Authentik, it's just an absolute PITA to interface with Netbird. And Netbird Debugging / Troubleshooting Capabilities are quite bad in my View, when something does not work (at all), it's not very clear (at least to me) as to why. And when it works, it's probably fine (until it breaks). I never managed to even get something to show up on the Web GUI so it's really frustrating to be honest  :(.

Granted, it could also be due to the Reverse Proxy (Traefik) Setup and possibly some Firewall Rules (I added exceptions based on Netbird specifically mentioning Hetzner Stateless Firewall although that did NOT make any Difference).

As to Wireguard breaking down ... I see that as a MUCH less likely Risk. Yes, it might be more of a PITA to set up Manually 100 Instances of Wireguard (Ironically in my Homelab, Gitlab and Nextcloud kinda forced my Hand on this one, since I HAVE to use NFS since their Update Script doesn't work with Samba/SSHFS Permissions and I don't have the Time to setup a Kerberos server for NFS - so I just do NFSv3 TCP over Wireguard UDP).

But compare generating a Keypair, setting up one small Config file for each Point-to-Point Connection with a System that might very easily break between Updates (either on Netbird side, or on Authentik/Keycloak/Zitadel side). I'd say Wireguard is very Reliable in that Regards.

Netbird should begin having some Consistency in their config File ... Depending on the Guide you Follow some Config/Environment Variables are NETBIRD_AUTH_XXXX and others are AUTH_XXXX and it's not always clear which Direction they are moving towards (I kinda had to duplicate quite a few of them in Order to suppress some Warnings in the Logs, although that did not solve my Problems).

[Gauss23]

By the book that's a full mesh, not a hub and spoke topology. In the latter everything goes through the hub.

You're completely right. But it doesn't have to be a full mesh, you can always control which spokes are able to talk to each other.

Good to know that's also a Feature Netbird provides  :). If only it would work in my case  :(.

As for Zitadel, that's the third Attempt I did back then on my Hetzner VPS (after Authentik and Keycloak) and it would NOT work at all. Zitadel was such a Memory Hog that I believe it triggered the OOM Killer due to excessive RAM Usage. Anyways, not an Option on a low CPU/RAM VPS. I have a dedicated Server now with several KVM Virtual Machines, so I could try that.

But I really liked Authentik, it's just an absolute PITA to interface with Netbird. And Netbird Debugging / Troubleshooting Capabilities are quite bad in my View, when something does not work (at all), it's not very clear (at least to me) as to why. And when it works, it's probably fine (until it breaks). I never managed to even get something to show up on the Web GUI so it's really frustrating to be honest  :(.

Code Select Expand

export NETBIRD_DOMAIN=netbird.example.com; curl -fsSL https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/releases/latest/download/getting-started-with-zitadel.sh | bash


that's basically all I did to get it up and running within 5 minutes.

My Netbird host is a Hetzner VPS, ARM64, 2 CPUs, 4 GB of RAM, of which only 1.2GB are used. Postgres as database backend. Can't really see the OOM problems you had.

Granted, it could also be due to the Reverse Proxy (Traefik) Setup and possibly some Firewall Rules (I added exceptions based on Netbird specifically mentioning Hetzner Stateless Firewall although that did NOT make any Difference).

As to Wireguard breaking down ... I see that as a MUCH less likely Risk. Yes, it might be more of a PITA to set up Manually 100 Instances of Wireguard (Ironically in my Homelab, Gitlab and Nextcloud kinda forced my Hand on this one, since I HAVE to use NFS since their Update Script doesn't work with Samba/SSHFS Permissions and I don't have the Time to setup a Kerberos server for NFS - so I just do NFSv3 TCP over Wireguard UDP).

But compare generating a Keypair, setting up one small Config file for each Point-to-Point Connection with a System that might very easily break between Updates (either on Netbird side, or on Authentik/Keycloak/Zitadel side). I'd say Wireguard is very Reliable in that Regards.

Netbird should begin having some Consistency in their config File ... Depending on the Guide you Follow some Config/Environment Variables are NETBIRD_AUTH_XXXX and others are AUTH_XXXX and it's not always clear which Direction they are moving towards (I kinda had to duplicate quite a few of them in Order to suppress some Warnings in the Logs, although that did not solve my Problems).

Netbird is a project under heavy development, so I think things like the naming of config variables will be aligned. But as far as I can tell, it's really solid. Not a single problem while updating or running it.

[luckylinux]

My Netbird host is a Hetzner VPS, ARM64, 2 CPUs, 4 GB of RAM, of which only 1.2GB are used. Postgres as database backend. Can't really see the OOM problems you had.

I have an old Hetzner AMD64 VPS with 2GB or RAM also on Hetzner. They increased the Prices a few Months ago, so I will probably just cancel that and use my own KVM Virtual Machine on the Dedicated Server instead.

EDIT 1: tried your Command after I shut everything else down so that Port 80/443 would be Free ... And after symlinking

# ln -s / usr/bin/podman /usr/bin/docker
#ln -s /usr/bin/podman-compose /usr/bin/docker-compose

Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_zdb_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_zitadel_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_coturn_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_management_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_relay_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_signal_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_dashboard_1" found: no such container
netbird-quickstart_caddy_1
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_zitadel_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_zdb_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_coturn_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_management_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_relay_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_signal_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_dashboard_1" found: no such container
netbird-quickstart_caddy_1
537090513c345560782ef175c08e189493932b95de2544738b3c25be008ae775
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_relay_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_signal_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_coturn_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_zitadel_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_zdb_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_management_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_dashboard_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with name or ID "netbird-quickstart_caddy_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_zitadel_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_zdb_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_coturn_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_management_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_relay_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_signal_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_dashboard_1" found: no such container
Error: no container with ID or name "netbird-quickstart_caddy_1" found: no such container
Error: no pod with name or ID pod_netbird-quickstart found: no such pod
4834915b5ccc38ab944085421f75e24649a222ac10936b9934503424ae397811
94826dfeff09f96232cb57ee7d3e98bf13555f3126a7ce676d95004e85d1d100
netbird-quickstart_caddy_1
✔ docker.io/netbirdio/dashboard:latest
Trying to pull docker.io/netbirdio/dashboard:latest...
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob f7dab3ab2d6e skipped: already exists 
Copying blob 25d8059c17de done   |
Copying blob ff09aab76d97 done   |
Copying blob e252bd70cdea done   |
Copying blob e9fb81678df7 done   |
Copying blob 78f3aa16cfa5 done   |
Copying blob b6c81a3e8178 done   |
Copying blob 932bd785729d done   |
Copying blob 217c556afd61 done   |
Copying blob f846d527a638 done   |
Copying blob cb7988d44772 done   |
Copying config 5aa906f022 done   |
Writing manifest to image destination
d800170607d2c90e26f03b84e5018a3f6d2510dc11d98dd9e01ddbc8bb590f6d
netbird-quickstart_dashboard_1
3bb334c8ed73d09b4b6d8dc5950116e58eb8bbdccb593979e957aa58334c7111
netbird-quickstart_signal_1
51555daff8ad139dfb116c240b779f41d67ccbbef9732bc670a5c1f5dafb9aa4
netbird-quickstart_relay_1
d4694f689c6e5e43804a9f99e175ae49ac0741cf9185ca797d762a647ae439d2
netbird-quickstart_management_1
9a642849aa9f33ed8836136e2bc9adef3abec013d7070a8e5ce8af4f98048612
netbird-quickstart_coturn_1
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/podman-compose", line 33, in <module>
    sys.exit(load_entry_point('podman-compose==1.2.0', 'console_scripts', 'podman-compose')())
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/podman_compose.py", line 3503, in main
    asyncio.run(async_main())
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.12/asyncio/runners.py", line 194, in run
    return runner.run(main)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.12/asyncio/runners.py", line 118, in run
    return self._loop.run_until_complete(task)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib64/python3.12/asyncio/base_events.py", line 687, in run_until_complete
    return future.result()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/podman_compose.py", line 3499, in async_main
    await podman_compose.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/podman_compose.py", line 1742, in run
    retcode = await cmd(self, args)
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/podman_compose.py", line 2499, in compose_up
    podman_args = await container_to_args(compose, cnt, detached=args.detach)
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.12/site-packages/podman_compose.py", line 1204, in container_to_args
    raise ValueError("'CMD_SHELL' takes a single string after it")
ValueError: 'CMD_SHELL' takes a single string after it

So yeah, not so easy with Podman I guess.

[Gauss23]

Ok, so podman seems to be the issue here. What speaks against using docker?

[luckylinux]

Ok, so podman seems to be the issue here. What speaks against using docker?

The same Argument that speaks against changing an entire System / Infrastructure / Set of Scripts / Network Topology / Administration in every Industry or Technical Domain just to address 1 "Edge" / Special Case: it's a big Pain in the Ass ...

So either you need to do a Mixed Setup, possibly requiring an extra IPv4 Public Address (since Podman/Docker will have to use port 80/443 for different Use Cases), or switch everything to Docker (and I almost migrated every Podman Installation to Fedora just because Debian isn't well supported under Podman).

But over the years I also learned that "the grass is NOT greener on the other Side". Whenever you think you switch Solution in order to (try to) fix a Problem, you might (will) also incur in several additional Issues that you didn't have before.

[Gauss23]

I usually run Proxmox and then spin up VMs or containers as needed. Every container gets the configuration it needs for the use case. Netbird server also needs a lot of ports to run, port 80/443 would therefore not be sufficient.
I would then suggest to use the OPNsense built-in WireGuard and manually connect what needs to be connected.

[Hobby-Student]

Ok, so podman seems to be the issue here. What speaks against using docker?

I have netbird (as management, as client and zitadel) running in podman rootless containers - running on multiple hosts. Everything is working fine.

[Gauss23]

Did you use the getting-started script with podman, too? Or did you configure the management node manually?