Dear Husarnet users, for quite some time we have been quieter than usual, and that is for a good reason. We have been busy writing a next version of Husarnet - Husarnet 3.0, and today we are excited to announce the start of the Public Beta phase for Husarnet 3.0!
What will change?
- Husarnet Dashboard - will have new, modern looks (dark theme!), but more importantly it will have modern features like live updates/notifications for changes and single sign-on.
- Husarnet Websetup - this is an element between Husarnet Daemons and Husarnet Dashboard that was responsible for propagating configuration changes. It will be replaced with a much more modern solution that will no longer require firewall changes and provide much faster joins and (re)configuration times.
- Husarnet Daemon - we've made a step forward when it comes to the clarity of configuration of a particular Daemon - i.e. fields like
Is joined?in status will reflect the Dashboard status much more closely, local API will return almost 1:1 copy of the data from the Dashboard and there will be a special mode of operation where you will be able to control your whole account from CLI even more securely.
Full list of changes can be found in the Beta-specific documentation.
When will be the change?
First of all we want to make a final pass of testing together with our users - we will start Public Beta phase today - meaning that you will be able to find a completely separate Husarnet world under https://beta.husarnet.com. This instance is meant to be used for testing only - it starts with a blank slate and will be irreversibly deleted after the Beta phase, so do not park any devices you can't lose access to there. This instance will have a very loose limits set - everyone will start with a 100 device limit, so you will be able to freely do any tests you like.
Public Beta will last roughly two months. After that we will be migrating the main network to the new codebase too. Exact date will be announced at least two weeks before it happens - but we do not intend to do so during the summer break.
Why we are doing the changes?
Our main goal is to increase the reliability of the so-called "control plane" - the layer that synchronizes the configuration between all systems. Current protocol required very specific firewall changes and was prone to various blips in the communication. New version provides additional methods of obtaining the desired state of any given part and being notified of configuration changes.
Why we add more changes on top of these?
Frankly speaking... because it was easy. While designing all these new mechanisms we had extensibility in mind and already planned for adding more features. This, in conjunction with the fact that we had to rewrite some of the internal building blocks from scratch for this new design made us implement some "extra" features along the way.
Final words
We are certain that we introduce are a step forward in the right direction. We do expect some minor issues along the way and this Beta phase is the time to find them and fix them. This is why we want you to be overly verbose about the quirks you find during your own tests and report them to us on https://community.husarnet.com. (Have in mind that some of the issues you report may be out of scope of this migration and we will be adding them to our followup lists for later).
Thank you for the trust, patience and have a wonderful day Paweł on behalf of Husarnet Team