ag-go / awl

Securely connect your devices into a private network

About

Anywherelan (awl for brevity) is a mesh VPN project, similar to tinc, direct wireguard or tailscale. Awl makes it easy to connect to any of your devices (at the IP protocol level) wherever they are.

Some use cases:

• connect to your home/work laptop with RDP/VNC/SSH, which is usually behind NAT. Much easier with awl instead of configuring port forwarding or using heavy VPNs
• get secure access to your selfhosted services like Nextcloud, Home Assistant or Bitwarden without exposing them to the internet
• gaming: local multiplayer like in one LAN
• as an alternative instead of ngrok to share your development server with someone on another device for demonstration
• you can use your old android device remotely with scrcpy + awl to run some android-only apps instead of using an emulator on your PC

Features

• unlike many alternatives, it works fully peer-to-peer, no need to set up or trust any third-party coordination servers. Your traffic goes directly to other devices
• easy to use: just download the app, scan QR code of your device, and you're set up
• built-in support for NAT traversal
• if both devices don't have public IP addresses (thus peer-to-peer is unavailable), awl will send your encrypted data through community relays (donates for infrastructure are welcome!)
• TLS encryption
• DNS server built-in. It allows using domains for your devices, like work-laptop.awl instead of IP address
• works on Windows, Linux, Android

📷 Screenshots

How it works

Awl mainly relies on two libraries: tun/wintun driver for virtual network interface (networking layer 3, IP) and libp2p as peer-to-peer networking stack.

As a transport awl uses QUIC or TCP with TLS on top. Awl uses DHT for connecting between peers.

At first, awl connects to community bootstrap nodes, register itself (send peer id (with public key) and public ip addresses) and later asks for addresses of peers you want to connect (all known peers). If peer does not have public addresses, peer could be reached out through bootstrap nodes.

Installation

For desktop there are two versions: awl and awl-tray. awl is mainly used for servers and other headless purposes and awl-tray is for desktop usage: it has nice system tray service to quickly get status of the vpn server, start/stop/restart it or to see which peers are online. Both versions have web-based ui for configuration and monitoring, and terminal interface cli.

First, download archive from releases page, extract it to any place you like.

Windows desktop (awl-tray)

After downloading you need to unpack zip archive and to run program as administrator (right click on binary ➞ run as administrator). This is necessary because only admins can create virtual network interfaces.

It's known problem that some antivirus software may get false detection, in this case you need to manually allow this application.

After starting the program you will see icon in system tray below. Press right click and choose Open Web UI. Or you can manually go to the http://admin.awl

Android

Simply install apk from releases page and launch the application.

Linux

Desktop (awl-tray)

Make sure zenity is installed. It's not mandatory, but highly recommended in order to have working notifications and modal dialogs.

sudo apt install -y zenity

After downloading just execute binary as any other app. It will ask root permissions in order to get access to /dev/tun and to create virtual network interface. For now, it won't automatically create desktop entry, but it will be added soon.

After starting the program you will see icon in system tray below. Press right click and choose Open Web UI. Or you can manually go to the http://admin.awl

Server (awl)

Download and extract binary to /etc/anywherelan/ directory.

# run under root
mkdir -p /etc/anywherelan
cd /etc/anywherelan
# NOTE: you need to set the latest release tag and correct arch (x86/arm/etc)
wget https://github.com/anywherelan/awl/releases/download/v0.8.1/awl-linux-amd64-v0.8.1.tar.gz
tar xfz awl-linux-amd64-v0.8.1.tar.gz

For running as a daemon and to start on system's boot it's recommended to configure systemd unit, see below.

Create file with the following config nano awl.service.

[Unit]
Description=Anywherelan server
After=network-online.target nss-lookup.target
Wants=network-online.target nss-lookup.target
ConditionPathExists=/etc/anywherelan/awl

[Service]
Type=simple
Environment="AWL_DATA_DIR=/etc/anywherelan"
WorkingDirectory=/etc/anywherelan/
ExecStart=/etc/anywherelan/awl
Restart=always
RestartSec=5s
LimitNOFILE=4000

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Setup systemd unit:

ln awl.service /etc/systemd/system/awl.service
systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable awl.service
systemctl start awl.service
systemctl status awl.service

Yay, awl is up and running!

# print server status
./awl cli me status
# set a name for your device
./awl cli me rename --name your-name-here
# print your peer id
./awl cli me id
# print help
./awl cli -h

See cli for more information on terminal client.

Connecting peers

To connect two devices with each other, you need to have their peer_ids. peer_id is a unique identifier of your device. One peer can send "friend invitation" to another. The second peer can accept or block the first one. After accepting the invitation, peers can access each other by their IP on vpn network or by their .awl domain address.

Below you can see example on how you can connect to public peer for testing purposes. This peer will automatically accept any invitations, so you don't need to wait for it.

Desktop/Android

Go to web interface (http://admin.awl) or run application in case of android. You can find your peer_id by clicking SHOW ID. To invite peer you need to press NEW PEER. Let's add public peer as an example. Enter peer_id equal to 12D3KooWJMUjt9b5T1umzgzjLv5yG2ViuuF4qjmN65tsRXZGS1p8 and name it awl-tester. After a few seconds you will see a new peer in your list. Now try to go to the http://awl-tester.awl/. You should see a page with network speed test.

Note that awl dns is currently unsupported on Android, see #17.

If someone invites you, a notification will appear, and then you can accept/block this peer in the admin interface.

Server

cd /etc/anywherelan
# print your peer_id
./awl cli me id
# print server status
./awl cli me status
# print all incoming friend requests
./awl cli peers requests
# invite peer or accept incoming request
./awl cli peers add --pid 12D3KooWJMUjt9b5T1umzgzjLv5yG2ViuuF4qjmN65tsRXZGS1p8 --name awl-tester
# print all known peers
./awl cli peers status

# try to access new peer
ping 10.66.0.2
# or by domain name
ping awl-tester.awl

Config file location

Awl looks for config file config_awl.json in paths in this order:

• in directory provided by environment variable AWL_DATA_DIR, if set. If path does not exist or there is no config file, awl will initialize new config in this path
• in the same directory as executable (if config file exists here)
• in OS-specific config directory. For example, on Unix it's $HOME/.config/anywherelan, on Windows it's %AppData%/anywherelan. If there is no config here, awl will initialize new config in this path

Tip: you can force using config file in the same directory with executable by creating config_awl.json with content {} before first launch.

It is not recommended to amend config file while application is still running.

Terminal based client

Both awl and awl-tray versions have CLI to communicate with vpn server.

TODO: examples

$ ./awl cli -h     
NAME:
   awl cli - p2p mesh vpn

USAGE:
   awl cli [global options] command [command options] [arguments...]

VERSION:
   v0.8.1

DESCRIPTION:
   Anywherelan (awl for brevity) is a mesh VPN project, similar to tinc, direct wireguard or tailscale. Awl makes it easy to connect to any of your devices (at the IP protocol level) wherever they are.
   See more at the project page https://github.com/anywherelan/awl

COMMANDS:
   me         Group of commands to work with your status and settings
   peers      Group of commands to work with peers. Use to check friend requests and work with known peers
   logs, log  Prints application logs (default print 10 logs from the end of logs)
   p2p_info   Prints p2p debug info
   update     Updates awl to the latest version
   help, h    Shows a list of commands or help for one command

GLOBAL OPTIONS:
   --api_addr value  awl api address, example: 127.0.0.1:8639
   --help, -h        show help
   --version, -v     print the version

Upgrading

Desktop

On desktop (awl-tray) you can upgrade application by clicking system tray icon ➞ Check for updates. It will ask for confirmation and replace the binary with the new version and restart the app.

Android

Awl is not yet published in any store, so the only option is to download new version .apk from the releases page and install it manually.

Server

You can easily upgrade and restart awl on remote host while being connected to it by awl (through ssh for example) and your connection won't be terminated.

# run under root
cd /etc/anywherelan
# no need to stop awl beforehand
./awl cli update
# restart with systemd in case you installed awl as described in Installation section
systemctl restart awl
# print current status
./awl cli me status

As alternative, on Desktop/Server you can download new version from releases page and manually replace old files with new ones.

Roadmap

• add support for awl dns for android (#17)
• add support for macOS (#18)
• performance improvements for vpn tunnel protocol
• exit nodes - let you route all internet traffic through other peers

Contributing

TODO