Tinc (protocol)

Tinc is an open-source, self-routing, mesh networking protocol and software implementation used for compressed and encrypted virtual private networks. It was started in 1998 by Guus Sliepen, Ivo Timmermans, and Wessel Dankers, and released as a GPL-licensed project.

tinc
Original author(s)	Guus Sliepen, Ivo Timmermans, Wessel Dankers
Developer(s)	The Tinc development team
Initial release	14 November 1998 (1998-11-14)
Stable release	1.0.36 / 26 August 2019; 5 years ago (2019-08-26)[1]
Preview release	1.1pre18 / 27 June 2021; 3 years ago (2021-06-27)[2]
Repository	tinc-vpn.org/git/tinc
Written in	C
Platform	Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, iOS, Android[3]
Type	VPN
License	GPL
Website	www.tinc-vpn.org

Platforms

Tinc is available on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, iOS (jailbroken only), Android with full support for IPv6.^[4]

Future goals

The authors of Tinc have goals of providing a platform that is secure, stable, reliable, scalable, easily configurable, and flexible.^[4]

Embedded technologies

Tinc uses OpenSSL or LibreSSL as the encryption library and gives the options of compressing communications with zlib for "best compression" or LZO for "fast compression".^[4]

Projects that use tinc

• Freifunk has tinc enabled in their routers as of October 2006.^[5]
• OpenWrt has an installable package for tinc.
• OPNsense, an open source router and firewall distribution, has a plugin for Tinc
• pfSense has an installable package in the 2.3 release.
• Tomato variants Shibby and FreshTomato include Tinc support.
• NYC Mesh uses tinc to connect parts of the mesh over the public internet that would be otherwise out of range.^[6]

See also

• Free and open-source software portal

• stunnel, encrypts any TCP connection (single port service) over SSL
• OpenVPN, an open source SSL VPN solution
• VTUN, an open source SSL VPN solution that can bridge Ethernet