Peer Tunnel
When you message someone, share a file or play a game online, a company usually sits in the middle. Even when it can't read the content, it can often see who you talk to and how often, and it sets the rules for both of you.
Udal Tunnel takes the company out. Edit a document, talk with someone, or play a game with no business or server in the middle, just you and your connections, directly. It reaches people by key rather than by address, runs as a separate service and is entirely optional.
How it worksDirect links to your contacts, and a private relay for everything else.
Between your contacts. When you connect to someone you know, your two devices talk directly over QUIC, a fast and modern way of sending data across the internet. Your contacts form a mesh, with nothing between you.
For general connections. Other traffic goes through a private mesh relay using garlic routing. This is similar to onion routing: your data is wrapped in layers of encryption and passed through several relays, and no single relay sees both where it came from and where it is going.
Used by appsApps call on it only when they need to reach another person.
The Tunnel isn't part of any one app. Apps use it when they need to connect to another person, and not otherwise. It's designed to go with Udal Apps, and it can also be used on its own.
Udal Privacy Browser is a separate product and doesn't need the Tunnel.
Your identity, and why nobody can see itNo sign-up and no directory. A key only you hold.
There is no sign-up. No email, no username, nothing held on anyone's server. Your machine makes a key and gives you 24 words to write down, and that is your identity.
There is no directory, no search and no suggestions. Nobody can look you up, and you can't look anyone up either. To connect, two people swap the public half of their keys and both accept within a short window. One side agreeing does nothing.
The two machines then work out a shared key between themselves. It is never sent anywhere and only those two machines can produce it. Remove someone and the connection, the key and what was shared over it all go.
You can be reached by the people you gave a key to, and nobody else.
Permissions you controlNothing is open by default, even after you connect.
Every way you interact with someone is switched off until you turn it on. You might hand over a document view-only, just once. You might let someone co-edit it once, or keep it open to them. A game of chess now and then, or a standing chat over Udal Tunnel Talk.
You can take any of it back at any time: a single share, one person's access, or everything at once. You can also appear offline to one particular person.
Tunnel IdentityOptional recovery and multi-device linking.
The optional Tunnel Identity lets you recover your identity from its recovery phrase, link it across several of your devices, and use a kill switch to lock a device you've lost.
Every data store is encrypted with AES-256-GCM, with keys derived using Argon2id.
What it's forMessages, calls, shared documents, games and files.
- Udal Tunnel Talk for private messages. Udal Tunnel Talk is still being built.
- Mail and calls directly between people. Audio conferences first, with video planned for later.
- Encrypted identity profiles.
- DocVaults and editing documents together.
- Two-player games and sending files between devices.
Planned: Broadcaster for publishing to people who follow you, Tunnel VPN for carrying ordinary traffic over the network, and Remote Desktop for reaching your own machines.
See Udal Apps