tracker as a rendezvous server

[zig158]

I am in the early stages of creating a Hamachi like peer-to-peer VPN application that has the ease of use of Hamachi with the flexibility of OpenVPN. Hamachi is nice but is to limited and not open source. OpenVPN is overly complicated to set up for the home user. I hope to fix that.

It is pointless to reinvent the weal, so I plan on letting OpenVPN do all the heavy lifting. My application “only” has to connect to a rendezvous server of some kind, get the peer’s IP address, and signal OpenVPN to connect.

Since this is open source and I do not have a web server, a regular server is not an option. My thought was to set up a torrent tracker with a dummy file. The application would announce itself to the tracker, and get the peer list. The application would then send a UDP packet to all the peers on the list, and wait for the correct one to replay. If all peers did this periodically on the same port it should open the port in your average router firewall.

My question is it legal and technically possible to use a tracker in this way, or should I keep searching for a different solution.

I have interfaced with Openvpn in the past and have been tinkering with UDP recently but torrent trackers and the like are way out of my sphere of experience. Any input is welcome.

By the way, I plan on writing this is C#

Zig158

[kenobewan]

Welcome to the site. 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name ;). No expert on this site should give you a legal opinion - they may however offer you a moral opinion free of charge.

My belief is that this kind of question is a little unfair. As the developer, I believe that it is your job to scope and map the requirements - offering and selecting a solution then proceeding to create the project. I suggest you do more research and decide on the best solution. Then come back and ask questions if you trouble with parts of the project.

If others wish to comment on the techincal part of your question, I have no problem with that.