ColumnLynx

A VPN Protocol with Simplicity in Focus

ColumnLynx is a basic VPN Protocol started as a learning project, with simplicity as its main design goal.

The "simplicity" part of the design revolves around making it do what VPNs are mainly supposed to provide: An encrypted tunnel between a client and server, providing access to a private LAN via the public internet.

The official design spec of the protocol can be found here.

From the perspective of the ISO/OSI networking model, ColumnLynx is a protocol that controls and operates mainly in the Layer 3 (Network) and Layer 4 (Transport) sections. It tunnels traffic from client to server, via an AES-256 encrypted tunnel, and sends that traffic out of the server under a newly-assigned private IP address.

The official implementation of the protocol is done in C++, although reimplementations in other languages are highly welcome.

Note: This project is still in early alpha. Changes to the protocol and general functionally are still rapid. This is not a production-ready protocol yet, however if you want to bring it ever so closer to that goal, please consider contributing code, ideas or any other general suggestions to the project.

Official Git Repository