# pylon

**Repository Path**: eeth/pylon

## Basic Information

- **Project Name**: pylon
- **Description**: No description available
- **Primary Language**: Unknown
- **License**: MPL-2.0
- **Default Branch**: main
- **Homepage**: None
- **GVP Project**: No

## Statistics

- **Stars**: 0
- **Forks**: 0
- **Created**: 2023-11-23
- **Last Updated**: 2023-11-23

## Categories & Tags

**Categories**: Uncategorized

**Tags**: None

## README

# ZeroTier Pylon
Proxy layer 5 traffic from your apps to and from your ZeroTier virtual network without installing ZeroTier and without bringing up any new network interfaces.

![Build](https://github.com/zerotier/pylon/actions/workflows/build.yml/badge.svg?branch=main)

## Build

Currently the build process will pull a submodule (which itself pulls submodules), build libzt there, and then link pylon against the resultant `libzt.a` static library. Requires `clang`, and `cmake` to build.

```
make
```

## Usage

Pylon can be run as one of two personalities that can work alone or together depending on your needs:

| Name  | What do | Is this a ZeroTier Node? |
| ------------- | ------------- | - |
| `pylon refract`  | This bridges traffic to and from your LAN | Yes | 
| `pylon reflect` | This relays traffic over `TCP/443`  | No |

In many cases a single `refract` instance is enough to bridge devices onto your ZeroTier network. However, if you're behind some tricky NAT you might need to set up a `reflect` instance on a machine with a static IP for your `refract` instance to use.

### Set identity

Set environment variable to hold your ZeroTier secret identity:

```
export ZT_PYLON_SECRET_KEY=$(sudo cat identity.secret)
```

### Specify an (optional) UDP port for ZeroTier to use

By default Pylon will chose a random port to send ZeroTier traffic over, but If you need it to only send traffic over a whitelisted port you can specify one like so:
```
export ZT_PYLON_WHITELISTED_PORT=4545
```

### Run `refract` instance

Run proxy service to listen for app traffic locally on `127.0.0.1:1080`:

```
./pylon refract b84ac5c40a2339c9 --listen-addr 0.0.0.0 --listen-port 1080
```

You can also listen on `0.0.0.0`.

### Run `reflect` instance

If you have a tricky NAT situation and can allow `TCP/443`, you can specify a relay on a machine with a static IP like so:

```
./pylon reflect
```

Then tell your pylon instances to use that to proxy traffic:

```
./pylon refract b84ac5c40a2339c9 --listen-addr 0.0.0.0 --listen-port 1080 --relay-addr 0.0.0.0 --relay-port 443
```

## Example Test

Set up remote resource:

```
mkdir serveme && cd serveme && echo "served data" > served.txt && \
python -m http.server -b 0.0.0.0 8000
```

Attempt a proxied HTTP GET:

```
curl --verbose --output output.txt 172.28.128.86:8000 --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:1080
```

## Debugging

```
make debug|clean
```

You'll get:

```
pylon-debug
```

## Limitations

While a single Pylon instance will work for multiple networks and multiple applications simultaneously it will perform better if a new instance is started for each proxied network. The underlying [libzt]() isn't multithreaded so it is recommended that you also split your proxied traffic across multiple instances if you notice performance bottlecks. Finally, Pylon only supports IPv4 TCP but IPv6 and UDP support can be added if there is sufficient interest.