Firezone and Zero-Trust Network Security with Thomas Eizinger

episode 19 — Firezone and Zero-Trust Network Security with Thomas Eizinger.

In this episode of Netstack.fm, Glen talks with Thomas Eizinger from Firezone about designing a zero trust enterprise VPN built on top of WireGuard. They break down how modern VPNs work in practice, covering virtual network adapters, split tunneling, DNS interception, policy based access, and secure packet routing using WireGuard, ICE, and TURN relays.

The discussion highlights how Firezone differs from legacy VPNs by focusing on performance, reliability, and minimal user friction, while also touching on the role of Rust and Elixir in Firezone’s architecture and the long term importance of IPv6 adoption.

Learn more:

https://github.com/firezone/firezone — Firezone main repository https://github.com/firezone/firezone/tree/main/rust/relay/ebpf-turn-router — Firezone eBPF in kernel relay router https://www.firezone.dev/kb/architecture/critical-sequences#detailed-connection-setup — Firezone Connection Setup https://www.wireguard.com/papers/wireguard.pdf — WireGuard whitepaper https://github.com/firezone/boringtun — Firezone fork of boringtun user space WireGuard https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8656 — TURN RFC 8656 https://x.com/firezonehq — Firezone on X https://x.com/oetzn — Thomas Eizinger on X https://hachyderm.io/@wheezle — Thomas Eizinger on Mastodon https://github.com/thomaseizinger — Thomas Eizinger on GitHub

Rama

If you like this podcast you might also like our modular network framework in Rust: https://ramaproxy.org

Chapters

00:00 Intro 00:42 Introduction to Thomas Eizinger 05:19 Firezone's Turn implementation 11:00 Understanding VPNs and Firezone's Approach 29:27 Legacy VPNs vs. Firezone: A New Era of Networking 36:19 Firezone is opensource 37:27 Zero-Trust VPNs 40:28 What is WireGuard 43:36 Firezone's Integration with WireGuard 50:19 Handling Connection Failures 58:00 Geolocation and Relay Selection 01:04:45 Elixir Developer Experience (DX) 01:10:19 IPv6 Adoption and Future Considerations 01:15:03 Outro

Netstack.FM

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Music for this episode was composed by Dj Mailbox. Listen to his music at https://on.soundcloud.com/4MRyPSNj8FZoVGpytj