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zerotier
ZeroTierOne
C++2013–2026
zerotier / ZeroTierOne

ZeroTierOne

A Smart Ethernet Switch for Earth

Systems & InfrastructureSecurity & PrivacyNetworking
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
33Distinct people
50Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
17.3KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A Smart Ethernet Switch for Earth

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 10:02:05 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year50 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2013-07-05 14:07:45 UTC to 2026-02-25 15:40:18 UTC.

02468102013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20132014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments20192020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 1 submissions, 9 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20132013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20142014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1019
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
ZeroTier - Global Area Networking Quick Links ZeroTier Documentation - Start here for downloads, installation, and usage How to build - Build instructions and platform requirements Corporate Site Downloads Service API Reference Network Controller Commercial Support License Information About ZeroTier is a smart programmable Ethernet switch for planet Earth. It allows all networked devices, VMs, containers, and applications to communicate as if they all reside in the same physical data center or cloud region. This is accomplished by combining a cryptographically addressed and secure peer-to-peer network (termed VL1) with an Ethernet emulation layer somewhat similar to VXLAN (termed VL2). Our VL2 Ethernet virtualization layer includes advanced enterprise SDN features like fine grained access control rules for network micro-segmentation and security monitoring. All ZeroTier traffic is encrypted end-to-end using secret keys that only you control. Most traffic flows peer-to-peer, though we offer free (but slow) relaying for users who cannot establish peer-to-peer connections. Apps for Android and iOS are available for free in the Google Play and Apple app stores. For repository layout, build instructions, platform requirements, and information about running ZeroTier, see build.md. License See LICENSE-MPL.txt for all code in node/, osdep/. service/, and everywhere else except ext/ and nonfree/. See nonfree/LICENSE.md for all non-free ("source available") portions of this repository. Code in ext/ is external code included for build convenience or backward compatibility and retains its original license.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

4 sources
api·Aug 5, 2016
We built ZeroTier initially for this use case, and though it's now maturing into something more powerful (SDN type features) it's still very useful for this and the WAN use case is not going away. https://www.zerotier.com/ https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierSDK The difference between something like ZeroTier and Tor is a trade-off between meta-data privacy and latency/speed. (Both encrypt the actual payload.) Efficient connectivity and anonymity are antagonistic goals. You can't provide both since optimization for one of these two goals implies violation of the other. Tor provides meta-data privacy, but it's impossible to do this without sacrificing a lot of performance. If you allow low latency on a privacy network, latency can be used to triangulate the endpoint. Rule of thumb: latency can never b
Read the rest
e lower than about 1/2 the time it takes a photon to travel the Earth's diameter. In practice it's higher since you must also account for median router latency. Same goes for high throughput though in that case you need much more detailed intel on the physical network. Rule of thumb here: if throughput is higher than global mean it can be used to rule out and thus narrow down paths in the graph. ZeroTier provides fast efficient low-latency direct connectivity but to do this requires that it introduce people directly, thus revealing peoples' locations (IP-wise) to each other. This is a hard requirement since the most efficient path is by definition the most direct and therefore de-anonymized (again IP-wise) path. You can't go directly A<>B without A knowing where B is and vice versa. Edit: I speak a bit theoretically above. In practice a weaker anonymity system could be deployed closer to the last mile to hide people at e.g. city resolution. But AFIAK this is not what Tor does, would probably require either a huge critical mass or last-mile carrier participation or both, and would still have a performance impact.
In Can NAT traversal be Tor's killer feature? (2014)
raarts·May 15, 2016
As far as I understand it, the binary contains compiled-in ip addresses for public nodes operated by zerotier. By recompiling you can run your own, they are not special in any way as I understand it. And if they go down your network wil not suffer, they are only used for initial setup. Separate from this you also have to option of running your own network manager. This will allow you to create and manage your own virtual networks, with your own GUI, billing etcetera. The Zerotier binary can be compiled with a special option to extend the build-in REST API for that. See: https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne/tree/master/service
In ZeroTier - Simple Software Defined Networking

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