README

Remote-Beyond is a VSCode extension that provides a frontend for the WebPier application. It enables access to non-public remote services. For example, if you have a host behind NAT and want to use it as a development machine, but your VPN is not fast enough, you can use WebPier and Remote-Beyond to forward SSH from the remote host directly to your local interface.

• How it works
• Requirements
• Using
• Home
• Copyright

How it works

WebPier creates a direct UDP tunnel between hosts and maps the remote TCP service to the local interface, or forwards the local TCP service to the remote side. To overcome NAT, it applies UDP hole-punching with help of STUN server, and uses email or DHT services as a rendezvous for exchanging endpoints. No third-party servers are used to relay traffic, and the tunnel is obscured by default, making it secure. However, for successful NAT traversal, the NAT must realize an independent mapping policy for outgoing connections. Fortunately, this is the most common case.

Requirements

To use the Remote-Beyond extension, you must install the WebPier >= 1.0.2 application.

Using

On the first start, you will be prompted to define the local Pier identity.

It consists of two parts. The first is an Owner identifier, which should be your email address if you want to use email as the rendezvous service in addition to DHT. The second is a Host identifier, which must be unique for the Owner. After providing the identifiers, a pair of cryptographic keys will be generated to protect rendezvous communications. By default, the Remote-Beyond context home directory is linked to the default WebPier context home. You can change it in the User scope of the VSCode configuration.

You may change the context settings by the Remote-Beyond: Edit context command:

You must specify an accessible STUN server, DHT bootstrap server, or your email account as a rendezvous. Select the Autostart option if you want to start WebPier backend as a daemon on system startup. Otherwise, the backend will up and down together with the client.

Create one or more export services on the server machine by the Remote-Beyond: Add export service command:

• Service - the name of the service to refer to it in rendezvous
• Pier - list of remote piers to export to, or remote pier to import from the service
• Address - IPv4 endpoint of the exporting service, or local IPv4 endpoint to import to the remote service
• Gateway - local IPv4 endpoint for the UDP tunnel
• Autostart - should the service run with application startup or manually
• Obscure - should the UDP tunnel be obscured; must be equal for both sides
• Rendezvous - selector of the preferred rendezvous; must match the remote side
• Bootstrap - bootstrap server for DHT rendezvous

If you haven't adopted any Pier to your server yet, leave the Pier field empty.

After that, you have to create an offer for the client-side. Invoke the Remote-Beyond: Create an offer... command, select services you want to export, and save the offer file. The offer will also contain the public key of your Pier.

Move the offer to your client machine, load it by the Remote-Beyond: Upload an offer... command, choose from offered services that you want to import, and assign addresses for them.

Now create a counter offer for the server machine. Move it there and load it. Finally, you must specify the adopted Pier in the configuration of services you want to export.

Once you have exchanged offers, you can configure services manually. Now you can manage the services by the Remote-Beyond palette commands or by buttons on the sidebar views:

Home

Remote-Beyond extension repository.

Copyright

MIT © Novemus