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Networking Intermediate

What is WireGuard?

A modern, lightweight VPN protocol that uses state-of-the-art cryptography and minimal code for fast, secure tunneling.

WireGuard is a VPN protocol designed for simplicity and performance. With approximately 4,000 lines of code (compared to OpenVPN's 100,000+), it has a smaller attack surface and is easier to audit. It uses Curve25519 for key exchange, ChaCha20 for encryption, Poly1305 for authentication, and BLAKE2s for hashing. WireGuard operates at the kernel level (built into Linux since 5.6) for high performance, achieving better throughput than IPsec and OpenVPN. Configuration is remarkably simple — each peer has a public/private key pair and a list of allowed IPs. It supports roaming (seamless IP changes) and establishes connections in milliseconds.

Related Terms

TCP/IP
The fundamental communication protocol suite of the internet that defines how data is packaged, addressed, transmitted, and received.
Network Bridge
A device or software that connects two or more network segments at the data link layer, forwarding traffic based on MAC addresses.
Proxy Server
An intermediary server that forwards requests between clients and destination servers, providing caching, filtering, or anonymity.
IP Address
A unique numerical label assigned to each device on a computer network for identification and communication.
SSL/TLS Certificate
A digital certificate that authenticates a website identity and enables encrypted HTTPS connections.
Latency
The time delay between sending a request and receiving a response, measured in milliseconds.
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