Connet

Getting started

To use Connet you'll need an account. Head over to the Dashboard to create one.

Once you've created an account, you'll need to create client token. These usually look like this:

2r2IyfetMS4k4H1pwNFKHSGDXP0_PUVwCj1g9pNVcPVFCRv1o5wzsniRof7Xp

The part before _ is your token ID, which is followed by the password associated with this token

The complete token is visible only at the time of creation. You must copy and use it in your configuration. If you loose it, you'll need to create a new one.

For finegrain control over your account, we recommend using separate tokens for each device you need to connect.

Now, download the connet client, and run the following to expose a local service running at port 3000:

connet --token "$CLIENT_TOKEN" \
  --server-addr "connet.dev:19190" \
  --dst-name "example" \
  --dst-addr "localhost:3000"

On another device, you could run connet --config connet.toml with the following config file:

# connet.toml
[client]
token = "CLIENT_TOKEN"
server-addr = "connet.dev:19190"

[client.sources.example]
addr = "localhost:3000"

You can use both command line parameters, as well as configuration file to configure connet. We recommend using a config file, since it offers better usability and flexibility.

Finally, head over to localhost to connect to the remove server

Clients

Clients expose destinations and/or sources. Clients communicate directly whenever possible, falling back to proxy communication through relays.

You can control routing behavior throught the route parameter. It supports the following options:

any - use whatever route is available. In case both direct and relay routes exist, prefers direct communication
direct - only use direct peer-to-peer client route
relay - only use relay proxy route

Destinations

A destination in Connet's terms is an upstream service you want to connect to. It may be running on the same device as connet's client, or on any device that this device has access to. Each destination has a name, which sources use to select where to send their traffic.

To configure a destination, use the following snippet in your client's config file:

# connet.toml
[client.destinations.A]
addr = "localhost:3000"

# multiple destinations could be defined
[client.destinations.B]
addr = "localhost:8080"
route = "direct"

Sources

A source in Connet's terms is a local server address. When a client connects to the source's address, the connection and all traffic going through it is send over to one of the destinations that matches by name.

To configure a source, use the following snippet in your client's config file:

# connet.toml
[client.sources.A]
addr = "localhost:3000"

# multiple sources could be defined
[client.sources.B]
addr = "localhost:8080"
route = "direct"

Relays

In addition to running clients, you can also run relays. Relays act as a proxy between the clients when they cannot communicate directly (under certain network conditions). Clients always prefer direct communication when possible. The relays you run in your account are only accessible by clients running in this account, maintaining privacy between clients.

Connet provides paid (currently free) relays out of the box. While clients in different accounts are isolated, the traffic that goes through these relays is not private. If you don't wish to use these, either you need to provision your own relays, or force direct routes at the client level.

To run a private relay, you'll need to create a relay token. Then download the connet binary and run connet relay --config relay.toml with the following configuration:

# relay.toml
[relay]
token = "RELAY_TOKEN"
control-addr = "connet.dev:19190"
# publicly visible hostname or ip for clients to connect to
hostname = "example.com"

Clients connect to relays directly, so their hostname needs to be accessible from every client you want to use relay. The easiest way to accomplish this is to deploy the relay on a VPS at one of the many cloud providers.