NordVPN has just announced its latest project built around the WireGuard connection protocol: the so-called NordLynx.
When it first showed up, WireGuard allowed VPN providers to create a delicate balance between top-notch security and high-speed connections. Its overall speed, lean architecture, and state-of-the-art cryptography allowed WireGuard to outshine its immediate competition – IPSec and OpenVPN. To illustrate this point further, WireGuard runs on 4,000 lines of code, which makes it easy to audit, deploy, and debug. On the other hand, OpenVPN consists of 400,000 lines of code.
Having said that, WireGuard is still under development and far from perfection. So far, it has been able to provide users with incredible connection speeds, but its ability to keep them anonymous is somewhat lacking at the moment. NordVPN saw the opportunity to provide its customers with better speeds and more reliable connections, which gave birth to NordLynx.
How NordLynx Works
WireGuard is unable to ensure complete privacy since it cannot assign IP addresses dynamically. Consequentially, the server must have a local static IP table in order to identify packet sources and destinations. In other words, your real IP has to be linked to an internal IP assigned by your VPN. This presented the team with quite a puzzle since they had to implement WireGuard’s benefits while strengthening its wobbly privacy capabilities.
In order to do this, NordVPN developed a double NAT system. Simply put, the double NAT basically creates two local interfaces; one that assigns a local IP to all users connected to any given server and one that assigns each tunnel with a unique IP. This allows the packets to travel between users and desired destinations without any mix-ups.
Bottom line, the newly developed double NAT system allows you to connect to your VPN without storing personally identifiable data on a server. Users are authenticated using an external database and dynamic local IPs only remain assigned during individual sessions.
Available Only For Linux Users
NordVPN Linux users will be the first to test NordLynx since the Linux app already supports it. Since the app uses OpenVPN by default, you have to switch to NordLynx manually:
- Update your app
- Install WireGuard (tutorials available on the official website)
- Open the terminal and type ‘nordvpn set technology NordLynx’
- Type ‘nordvpn c’ to establish a connection
You can always switch back to OpenVPN by typing ‘nordvpn set technology OpenVPN’. The team is currently working on providing users with tutorials on how to set up NordLynx on different third-party WireGuard clients.