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Setting up a private mesh VPN with WireGuard®

Published on 02 July 2020
  • mesh-VPN
  • WireGuard
  • multi-site

WireGuard - Overview

WireGuard is a modern VPN (Virtual Private Network) software. It is designed to be run almost anywhere, and to be cross-platform. Compared to other similar software, it is faster, more secure and simpler.

In this tutorial, we show how to use Wireguard to spin up a private mesh network to create a secure private connection between your different servers and Instances. A mesh network allows your devices to communicate between each other using a Virtual Private Network without the need for a central server:

We use two Ubuntu Instances, one located in the PAR-1 region, the other located in the AMS-1 region, and create a virtual network between them.

Security & Identity (IAM):

You may need certain IAM permissions to carry out some actions described on this page. This means:

  • you are the Owner of the Scaleway Organization in which the actions will be carried out, or
  • you are an IAM user of the Organization, with a policy granting you the necessary permission sets
Tip:
Requirements:

Downloading and installing WireGuard

  1. Log into each of your Instances using SSH:

    ssh root@my.compute.instance.ip

  2. Update and upgrade your system, install the kernel headers for your version and install WireGuard using apt:

    apt update && apt upgrade -y
    apt install linux-headers-$(uname --kernel-release) # installs the right kernel headers for your version
    apt install wireguard

  3. Run wg to make sure Wireguard is installed by running. You should get no output as this indicates that Wireguard was correctly installed. You can run modprobe wireguard to check that the WireGuard kernel module has loaded. Depending on your system configuration, a reboot might be required to activate the wireguard module.

  4. Generate the public and private keys for WireGuard:

    cd /etc/wireguard
    umask 077
    wg genkey | tee privatekey | wg pubkey > publickey

  5. Run cat privatekey and cat publickey for both Instances to retrieve their private and public keys. An output similar to the following displays:

root@scw-instance-ams1:/etc/wireguard#  cat privatekey
uJHRlma4LK8maULzMHWATJtGLs9yPvv+/+Rqj8UKU3k=
root@scw-instance-ams1:/etc/wireguard# cat publickey
ioytQhwtItPx0mnAyCRBaarxL5x5a3q5dUg2mthdlTw=

Configuring Wireguard manually

Smaller VPNs can be configured using the wg0.conf configuration file of Wireguard. The following parameters are set in the configuration file:

  • 192.168.1.1 is a randomly chosen private IP address for the VPN interface of the virtual Instances located in PAR-1.
  • 192.168.1.2 is a randomly chosen private IP address for the VPN interface of the virtual Instances located in AMS-1.
  • The Endpoint is the public IP address of every other Instance.
  • 52345 is a randomly chosen UDP port number used for the communication of the VPN.

On the first Instance

Note:

In this example we assume that the Instance is the one we created in the PAR-1 region.

Create the directory in which you will save your file using the following command mkdir -p /etc/wireguard.

Create the file /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf using the following command: nano /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf and paste the following content. Replace the values in the brackets as necessary:

[Interface]
PrivateKey = <PAR-1-instance-private-key>
Address = 192.168.1.1
ListenPort = 52345
[Peer]
PublicKey = <AMS-1-instance-public-key>
AllowedIPs = 192.168.1.2
Endpoint = <AMS-1-instance-public-IP>:52345

Your file should look like the following:

[Interface]
PrivateKey = IMR/CZzu5hVJNPqWXhj+H4cHUbCPlvn91VwN3jVNOGw=
Address = 192.168.1.2
ListenPort = 52345
[Peer]
PublicKey = vIsJ+ZXVc8t8mkkpUIaqHKu9hE8PERT0lxb5nowDkx8=
AllowedIPs = 192.168.1.1
Endpoint = 163.172.141.6:52345

On the second Instance:

Note:

In this example we assume that the Instance is the one we created in the AMS-1 region.

Create the directory in which you will save your file using the following command mkdir -p /etc/wireguard.

Create the file /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf using the following command: nano /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf and paste the following content. Replace the values in the brackets as necessary:

[Interface]
PrivateKey = <AMS-1-instance-private-key>
Address = 192.168.1.2
ListenPort = 52345
[Peer]
PublicKey = <PAR-1-instance-public-key>
AllowedIPs = 192.168.1.1
Endpoint = <PAR-1-instance-public-IP>:52345

Enabling the Wireguard VPN

  1. Enable and start Wireguard on both Instances using systemctl:

    systemctl enable wg-quick@wg0.service
    systemctl start wg-quick@wg0.service

  2. Test the VPN connection on each Instance using the ping command:

    root@PAR-1:~# ping 192.168.1.2
    PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.87 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.992 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.37 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.21 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=1.57 ms
    ©64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.43 ms
    --- 192.168.1.2 ping statistics ---
    6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5008ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.992/1.577/2.873/0.607 ms
    root@AMS-1:~# ping 192.168.1.1
    PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.72 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.45 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.35 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.35 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=1.25 ms
    64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.44 ms
    --- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
    6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5008ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.257/1.429/1.724/0.148 ms

    As you can see, each Instance responds to the ping command of the other peer, indicating that the VPN connection is active.

    Tip:

    If you have problems with the ping, check the content of your wg0.conf files and then use the command systemctl restart wg-quick@wg0

    Tip:

    If you have problems with the ping, check the content of your wg0.conf files and then use the command systemctl restart wg-quick@wg0.service

You can now transfer data between your Instances over a secure private network connection.

Automatizing configuration generation

When managing a large number of machines in a WireGuard mesh network, configuring them manually can be time-consuming. Several projects facilitate the automatized generation of WireGuard configurations to manage your mesh networks with ease. We will use a python script called WireGuard Mesh Configurator to generate the configurations for our Instances.

You can carry out the following steps on your local machine, or any Instance:

  1. Make sure git, python3-pip, and python3 are installed on your machine:

    apt install git python3-pip python3 libncurses-dev -y

  2. Clone the GitHub repository of the script you need for the configuration:

    git clone https://github.com/k4yt3x/wg-meshconf

  3. Enter the script’s directory and install the requirements for it:

    cd wg-meshconf
    pip install 'wg-meshconf@git+https://github.com/k4yt3x/wg-meshconf.git'

  4. Create a new configuration:

    wg-meshconf init

  5. Type wg-meshconf addpeer <PEERNAME> --address=<SUBNET> to create a new peer. Make sure you replace the information between brackets as necessary.

    wg-meshconf addpeer peer1 --address=192.168.19.21/24

    Repeat this step for all peers in the mesh network.

  6. Run wg-meshconf showpeers to make sure your peers have been added correctly.

    ┏━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
    ┃ Name  ┃ Address          ┃ ListenPort ┃ PrivateKey                           ┃
    ├───────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
    │ peer1 │ 192.168.19.21/24 │ 51820      │ cLtiGRp0mGzVwnKVf9skY9mxYv78EtPA0x4… │
    ├───────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┤
    │ peer2 │ 192.168.2.0/24   │ 51820      │ 4EzxxPIadfpQzIFE0dyPqLGoZrm49iHy04X… │
    └───────┴──────────────────┴────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┘

  7. Use the following command to generate the configuration files for all peers wg-meshconf genconfig. The configuration files will be named after the peers’ names. By default, all configuration files are exported into a subdirectory named output.

  8. Access a specific configuration file using the following commands:

    cd output
    cat user1.conf

  9. Copy the created Wireguard configuration files to each Instance using any method you like (SFTP, FTPS, plain copy & paste, etc.). Make sure to store the configuration at /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf to be able to use the wg-quick command for express configuration.

  10. SSH into each of the Instance peers and configure WireGuard. We use the wg-quick command to create an interface using our generated configuration and make it a service, so the interface will be configured automatically during system boot. Repeat this step on any of the peers.

    wg-quick up wg0
    systemctl enable wg-quick@wg0.service

You have now configured a mesh network using WireGuard which allows your Instances to communicate between themselves via a private and encrypted connection. As there is no central server, the network will continue to work if one of the peers fails.

For more information about WireGuard, refer to the official documentation.

“WireGuard” is a registered trademark of Jason A. Donenfeld.