nullnet-grpc

gRPC-based controller for the Nullnet architecture

This repository contains the gRPC-based controller for the Nullnet architecture.

The controller is responsible for managing the network:

• receives hosted services from the clients part of the network
• receives external requests asking for a specific service
• creates on-the-fly the needed infrastructure (VLANs / VXLANs) to connect the client hosting the service to the external client asking for it
• destroys the infrastructure when the service is no longer needed
• keeps local configuration about the hosted services and their dependency chain

Prerequisites

• install Rust

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

• install protobuf

curl -OL https://github.com/google/protobuf/releases/download/v3.20.3/protoc-3.20.3-linux-x86_64.zip
unzip protoc-3.20.3-linux-x86_64.zip -d protoc3
sudo mv protoc3/bin/* /usr/local/bin/
sudo mv protoc3/include/* /usr/local/include/

Usage

Repositories of the different components part of the architecture:

• nullnet-server
• nullnet-proxy
• nullnet-client

Each of them needs to be cloned under the /root directory to correctly run as daemon with the provided linux-setup.sh scripts.

nullnet-server

• set environment variables

NET_TYPE=VXLAN
TIMEOUT=0

• service configuration must be stored at ./services/services.toml and declare services as follows:

[[services]]
name = "color.com"
timeout = 0
proxy_dependencies = ["fs.color.com"]

[[services.triggers]]
port = 5555
chain = ["ts.color.com"]

[[services]]
name = "fs.color.com"

• proxy_dependencies is a linear dep chain walked when the service is reached via a Proxy RPC from nullnet-proxy

• each [[services.triggers]] block pairs a port observed on the initiator's host with a linear chain walked when the service is reached via a BackendTrigger RPC from nullnet-client (one chain per port)

• run the project as daemon with:

./linux-setup.sh

• the server will regularly update a view of the network and store it in the file ./graph.dot

---

nullnet-proxy

• set environment variables (set CONTROL_SERVICE_ADDR to the IP of nullnet-grpc-server)

CONTROL_SERVICE_ADDR=192.168.1.100
CONTROL_SERVICE_PORT=50051

• run the project as daemon with:

./linux-setup.sh

• the proxy will run on port 7777 and receive requests in the form service_name:7777

---

nullnet-client

• set environment variables (set CONTROL_SERVICE_ADDR to the IP of nullnet-grpc-server, ETH_NAME to the ethernet interface to monitor)

CONTROL_SERVICE_ADDR=192.168.1.100
CONTROL_SERVICE_PORT=50051
ETH_NAME=ens18

• service configuration must be stored at ./services.toml and declare services as follows:

# services = [] # use this if you don't want to declare any service

[[services]]
name = "color.com"
port = 3001
docker_container = "stack-name_container-name" # should correspond to the label "com.docker.swarm.service.name"

[[services]]
...

• run the project as daemon with:

./linux-setup.sh