Meet net maker, a startup that can help you create and manage a virtual overlay network that works on the web. In other words, Netmaker is a layer that gives the feeling that several machines are next to each other and connected to the same local network.
Behind the scenes, Netmaker relies heavily on WireGuard, a VPN protocol with great performance. Compared to older VPN protocols such as OpenVPN or IPsec, WireGuard is faster, more secure and more flexible at the same time.
Netmaker is the orchestration part of the equation. It runs on and manages WireGuard tunnels in your network. When you push a configuration change, that change is propagated to all machines on the network. Likewise, if there is an update, Netmaker can push updates to all clients in your installation.
So how can you use Netmaker? For example, if you run an internet-of-things business, chances are you have devices scattered across several physical locations. With Netmaker you can make these devices communicate with each other much more easily.
If you’re a business with a distributed workload across multiple clouds or have a hybrid infrastructure, you can use Netmaker as a kind of flexible VPC that isn’t limited to a single cloud account.
The best part is that you don’t have a lot of performance overhead when using Netmaker. “It’s just WireGuard’s performance and we’re getting very close to WireGuard’s performance,” co-founder and CEO Alex Feiszli told me.
Based in Asheville, North Carolina, the startup raised $2.3 million after graduating from Y Combinator in a round led by Lytical Ventures, Uncorrelated VC and SaxeCap, which also included Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund and others.
Netmaker competes with other startups such as Tailscale, Zero layer and Defined Networking Nebula — some of them are well funded. Netmaker thinks it is faster than these competitors because these companies tend to use relay connections or have made other technical choices, such as running WireGuard in user space network mode.
There are currently about 1,200 entities using Netmaker and a large proportion of them are businesses. The startup has just launched the beta version of the paid version with more features.
It is clear that we are in the early days of a networking revolution that will change the way computing infrastructure is designed. And Netmaker wants to be part of this new wave of startups. As Feiszli wrote in an email, “I think WireGuard has the power to reshape networks in the cloud and beyond similar to how Kubernetes has disrupted computing.”
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