The primary focus of this version is better integration with the
Microsoft Windows operating system.
Virtual networks should now be detected as "real" networks. For
each network, a message box should pop up the first time the network
is detected and classified allowing the user to choose its services
and security designation. On Windows 7 this is "work," "home," or
"public." On Windows 8 it's a simple choice of whether or not to
enable file and printer sharing and other services.
Several bugs have been fixed. Among these are a Windows threading
issue, several minor threading deadlock issues that could manifest
if rapidly adding and removing networks, and a command line interface
issue. The network list now shows the network MAC address as well,
a UI oversight in previous versions. A vectorized SSE implementation
of Salsa20 is now included for improved encrypt/decrypt performance.
The sending of low-TTL "firewall opener" packets has been disabled
in this version, since they may not be necessary and may harm NAT
traversal in some configurations. We will measure the effectiveness
of NAT traversal and see if this change improves performance in the
field.
Finally, this version obsoletes both the Tokyo and Sydney supernodes
in favor of a single larger supernode in Singapore. This decision was
made on the basis of bandwidth costs-- both Tokyo and Sydney are
significantly more expensive. We'd like to keep the basic service free,
so keeping bandwidth costs for relaying low is important. Since NAT
traversal works well and is constantly being improved, most users will
not see a speed decrease from this. Some Chinese users may see
improved performance since Singapore may be closer than Tokyo to many
Chinese cities.
The next major releases will focus on better Macintosh platform integration,
further improvements to NAT traversal, and UI improvements.
This version fixes several bugs including an issue with networks that have
EtherType filtering disabled, a file permission issue that affected non-English
versions of Windows, a multicast propagation bug that caused multicasts to
be dropped more often than they should be, and an issue with IP auto-configuration.
It also introduces experimental support for bridging between physical and virtual
networks, a much-requested and powerful ability that's been planned from the start.
ZeroTier One can now replace the functionality of ordinary VPNs, link multiple
offices into a single LAN, and connect virtual machine backplanes in the cloud to
physical networks at home, among other things.
Bridging support isn't "officially" out yet, since the web UI part is still
in development. But when that is done, an official announcement will be
made on the blog and users can try it out. So far bridging has only
been tested under Linux with the Linux kernel's native bridging driver.
YMMV on other platforms. Try it out and let us know by filing bugs at GitHub
or e-mailing them to "contact@zerotier.com".
This version fixes a few more issues with TCP tunneling including GitHub issue #63.
It also adds automatic announcement and location of peers on physical LANs (GitHub
issue #56) which should greatly improve performance if you happen to be on the same
LAN or WiFi network as another peer. It can take 60 seconds or so for this to occur,
but it should.
This, quick on the heels of 0.8.0, fixes the fact that TCP tunneling was
broken. :)
There was a bug that only manifested in some cases, and not on my testnet.
I took the opportunity to clean up some of that logic generally. I need a
better testnet, but that will have to wait until we exit beta and hopefully
I can earn a little bit of money off this. A better testnet will require
a big beefy virtualization box or two to run hundreds to thousands of KVMs.
Also fixed a tiny cosmetic issue on Windows. Other than that no changes.
This version introduces a major new feature requested by several users,
both via the user survey and otherwise: TCP tunneling.
If you are not able to communicate over UDP/9993, ZeroTier One will switch to
TCP connections to ZeroTier's supernodes. This is always slower than UDP, but
will allow you to communicate behind all but the most extremely restrictive
firewalls. This TCP traffic travels over port 443 and looks like HTTPS (SSL)
traffic (though it isn't), since that port is almost always open.
This also fixes several minor bugs and attempts to improve the robustness of
Windows tap driver management. Several users have reported spurious issues
with the Windows tap device, though I was unable to reproduce any of these with
clean VMs. (Tried Windows 7 and 8.1, both x86 and x64. No luck.) But I tried
to beef up the tap code anyway in the hopes of catching it. It now tries a lot
harder to make sure the tap is up and running.
There was some significant under the hood refactoring in support of TCP, so
this was a non-trivial change.
I bumped the version to 0.8 to indicate that more and more features are being
crossed off the list as we approach 1.0 and exit from beta. After this, the next
major feature will be LAN announcement to find direct paths to peers on the
same physical LAN. But assuming that 0.8.0 goes smoothly, I am going to divert
attention to the web site. A new design is coming that is much cleaner, sharper,
and easier to use.
Thank you all for all your excellent feedback! We're well on the way to a killer
product that makes conventional VPNs and other kludges obsolete.
Version 0.7.2 marks the first release of ZeroTier One for Windows. Binaries will be
released to a few select testers at first, then to the whole world. Installation from
MSI and auto-update appear to be working. So far Windows 7 and 8 and Windows Server
2008 or newer are supported. Vista has issues so it's not supported at the moment,
and may not be since nobody seems to use it (according to Google Analytics).
Adam Ierymenko
Adam Ierymenko