In today’s world, privacy, scalability, and reliability are essential considerations for any modern network. That’s where VeilNet comes into play—a layered, resilient topology that helps protect users’ traffic, streamlines connectivity, and manages resources behind a central coordinating entity. In this post, we’ll explore the main components of VeilNet as depicted in the topology diagram and walk through how they all fit together.
The Big Picture
VeilNet contains the following key components:
- The User node, which sits outside the veil network.
- Multiple Rift nodes that are scattered inside the VeilNet.
- A Veil Master supports centralised signalling across all Rifts.
User Node
The User Node in VeilNet’s topology is any device—whether it’s a laptop, desktop, smartphone, or tablet—that runs a WireGuard client. WireGuard is a modern VPN protocol known for its simplicity and speed. Its open-source nature ensures that clients are available across all platforms, fostering broad compatibility and community trust. By running WireGuard, the User Node not only establishes a secure tunnel into VeilNet via designated rifts but also gains protection on local networks, shielding the device from potential local threats.
Rift Node
The rift node is a critical component of VeilNet’s topology, engineered to support multi-hop relays with advanced security protocols and built on top of the WireGuard TUN driver. Each rift node employs state-of-the-art encryption—combining Kyber KEM and AES_GCM 256 encryption secured by a domain-specific secret known only to the user—to protect data as it traverses the network. These nodes automatically form an optimized topology, ensuring that no rift belonging to the same domain is left isolated and that no rift is more than two hops away from any other. Using an ID-based routing algorithm, they dynamically select the most efficient paths for data transmission. Furthermore, when relaying data, rift nodes establish a dedicated peer-to-peer encryption stream on top of the WebRTC data channel encryption; this stream is unique to each site or destination the user visits and is periodically reformed to maintain robust security and optimal performance.
Veil Master
The Veil Master is the scalable control plane of VeilNet, built on MQTTv5 rGPC and inspired by software-defined networking principles. It offers a unified channel for rift nodes to exchange control signals and negotiate operational parameters, thereby simplifying dynamic routing, configuration management, and overall network coordination. By effectively enabling every rift to function as an SD-WAN, the Veil Master empowers each node with autonomous decision-making while still benefiting from centralized orchestration. Notably, this design ensures that even if the Veil Master goes down, the established topology and connections between rift nodes remain unaffected, allowing the network to continue its secure and efficient operations without interruption.
