Blog - MattBits

Goals I started off with a basic goal - host a small python website, which uses a MySQL-like database on a highly available cluster. After recently moving from a rack in a datacenter (and fortunately saving ~£250/month), I started looking at hosting some web applications on VPSs from a couple of providers. Of course, this means: Every instance costs money - I can no longer spin up 10 extra VMs because the hardware is already running… each instance costs.

Tinc appears to be one of the few open source mesh VPNs and, in my expierience, once working, performs incredible well. That said, the configuration of tinc is a little clunky and repetitive, nor does their documentation give much of a clue as to what is required for a minimal setup. Example The following example will connect 4 machines in a tinc mesh network; one machine has a direct internet connection (and have public IP addresses); two are behind a NAT gateway, with tinc ports being fowarded to one of the nodes; one machine is behind a different NAT gateway, again, unable to forward ports.