WireGuard is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography.
Traffic is encrypted and encapsulated in UDP packets.
Driver design
WireGuard creates a virtual network device that is accessed via netlink. It appears like any network device and currently has a hardcoded
name subwg0.
WireGuard identifies peers by their cryptographic public key without the need to exchange shared secrets. The owner of the public key must
have the corresponding private key to prove identity.
The driver creates the key pair and adds the public key to the local endpoint so other clusters can connect. Like ipsec, the node IP
address is used as the endpoint udp address of the WireGuard tunnels. A fixed port is used for all endpoints.
The driver adds routing rules to redirect cross cluster communication through the virtual network device subwg0. (note: this is
different from ipsec, which intercepts packets at netfilter level.)
The driver uses wgctrl, a go package that enables control of WireGuard devices
on multiple platforms. Link creation and removal are done through netlink.
Currently assuming Linux Kernel WireGuard (wgtypes.LinuxKernel).
Installation
WireGuard needs to be installed on the gateway nodes. For
example, (Ubuntu < 19.04),
The default UDP listen port for submariner WireGuard driver is 4500. It can be changed by setting the env var CE_IPSEC_NATTPORT
It is assumed that the wireguard network device named submariner is exclusively used by submariner-gateway and should not be edited manually.
Troubleshooting, limitations
If you get the following message
Fatal error occurred creating engine: failed to add wireguard device: operation not supported
you probably did not install WireGuard on the Gateway node.
The e2e tests can be run with WireGuard by calling make e2e with using=wireguard:
make e2e using=wireguard
No new iptables rules were added, although source NAT needs to be disabled for cross cluster communication. This is similar to disabling
SNAT when sending cross-cluster traffic between nodes to submariner-gateway, so the existing rules should be enough. The driver will
fail if the CNI does SNAT before routing to Wireguard (e.g., failed with Calico, works with Flannel).
Monitoring
The following metrics are exposed per gateway:
connection_status: indicates whether or not the connection is established where the value 1 means connected and 0 means disconnected.
connection_established_timestamp the Unix timestamp at which the connection established.
gateway_tx_bytes Bytes transmitted for the connection.
gateway_rx_bytes Bytes received for the connection.
const (
// DefaultDeviceName specifies name of WireGuard network device. DefaultDeviceName = "submariner"
// PublicKey is name (key) of publicKey entry in back-end map. PublicKey = "publicKey"
// KeepAliveInterval to use for wg peers. KeepAliveInterval = 10 * time.Second
)