iodine lets you tunnel IPv4 data through a DNS server.
This can be usable in different situations where internet access is firewalled, but DNS queries are allowed. It needs a TUN/TAP device to operate. The bandwidth is asymmetrical, with a measured maximum of 680 kbit/s upstream and 2.3 Mbit/s downstream in a wired LAN test network. Realistic sustained throughput on a Wifi network using a carrier-grade DNS cache has been measured at some 50 kbit/s upstream and over 200 kbit/s downstream. iodine is the client application, iodined is the server.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Higher performance – iodine uses the NULL type that allows the downstream data to be sent without encoding. Each DNS reply can contain over a kilobyte of compressed payload data.
- Portability – iodine runs on many different UNIX-like systems as well as on Win32. Tunnels can be set up between two hosts no matter their endianness or operating system.
- Security – uses challenge-response login secured by MD5 hash. It also filters out any packets not coming from the IP used when logging in.
- Less setup – handles setting IP number on interfaces automatically, and up to 16 users can share one server at the same time. Packet size is automatically probed for maximum downstream throughput.
Website: code.kryo.se/iodine
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Erik Ekman
License: ISC License
iodine is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Network Tunnels | |
|---|---|
| frp | Fast reverse proxy |
| Pangolin | Tunneled mesh reverse proxy server with access control |
| iodine | Tunnel IPv4 data through a DNS server |
| wstunnel | Tunnel traffic over Websocket or HTTP2 |
| Chisel | Fast TCP/UDP tunnel |
| GO Simple Tunnel | Provides proxying, port forwarding, and reverse proxy capabilities |
| Tuntox | Forwards TCP connections over the Tox protocol |
| rustunnel | Secure tunnelling platform |
| 6tunnel | Tunnelling for applications that don't speak IPv6 |
| Gurren | SSH tunnel manager |
| VTun | Create virtual tunnels over TCP/IP networks |
| Ping Tunnel | Tunnel TCP connections to a remote host using ICMP echo request |
| isatapd | Creates and maintains an ISATAP tunnel |
| ClashT | Rule-based tunnel in Go |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |
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