Docs:03 VPN with Tinc

This page was last edited on 21 February 2025, at 14:00. 
Deprecated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tinc is becoming deprecated . . . . this means these docs aren't very maintainable, as this software will become insecure and start to break. Why have them here? well it is partly to show a key resource in the making of this project, and one that has been shared and reused in different contexts. It is also to show the history of why we are using this software setup, which you can read under Why Tinc??

VPN

Tinc is a Virtual Private Network (VPN) daemon that uses tunnelling and encryption to create a secure private network between hosts on the Internet. There are many other VPN software but as the name suggests they provide a way to create a private network virtually on top of existing networks. This means that as long as we have one public IP, on a software level we can start to construct a networks between devices, and ones that can hold and support the infrastructures and services we need. As we see more in the sections below there is a history of using these networks to enable servers to be autonomous, moving and crossing institutional and geopolitical boundaries.

Find out more about Tinc and VPNs from their site.

Why Tinc?

We are using tinc because it is inherited from the history of projects that we are working with. This setup pulls from the original work of XPub and their HUB project, which used it to form experimental server space for their students which could get passed institutional firewalls securely and let devices roam. This led to the development into other projects like Rosa and the ATNOFS project as well as Constant's Circulations. Similarly, we used the setup to form an experimental network of servers to form a collective publishing infrastructure.

You can read more on this history at the bottom of Constant's Circulations about page under the heading Radical Referencing.

Below is a list of other resources and docs on how to setup tinc that we have worked from/with:

To Install!

To install Tinc, you need at least two machines:

  1. A main server/hub with an open IP address
  2. Node(s) to connect to it

You need to install Tinc on all devices, but the configuration on the hub and the node will be slightly different.

Below is the order of the Install pages:

If you want to install on Windows, it may be better to run tinc from a Ubuntu console like this

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