Setting Up WireGuard

WireGuard® is an extremely simple yet fast and modern VPN that utilizes state-of-the-art cryptography. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner.

Assuming you have a local node (i.e. block producer / validator client / local laptop) and remote node (i.e. relay node / beacon-chain node / VPS), this guide helps you secure and encrypt your network traffic between the two machines with WireGuard.

This greatly minimizes the chances that your local node is attacked and minimizes the attack surface of the remote node by not requiring you to open ports for services such as Grafana.

Only the remote node is public internet facing online and the local machine can access the remote node's internal services, such as Grafana.

🐣 Installing WireGuard

Linux Headers needs to be installed before WireGuard. Below you see the generic headers being installed.

sudo apt install linux-headers-generic
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wireguard/wireguard -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wireguard -y

In case of linux header problems, use the following instead.

sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Be aware this will require installing the headers again. Not restarting with the new linux-headers will prevent Wireguard network interface from functioning.

🗝️ Setting Up Public/Private Key Pairs

On each node, to generate a public/private key type the following commands:

sudo su

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

🤖 Configuring WireGuard

Create a wg0.conf configuration file in /etc/wireguard directory.

Update your Private and Public Keys accordingly.

Change the Endpoint to your remote node public IP or DNS address.

Two Node Setup ( i.e. 1 block producer, 1 relay node)

# local node WireGuard Configuration
[Interface]
# local node address
Address = 10.0.0.1/32
# local node private key
PrivateKey = <i.e. SJ6ygM3csa36...+pO4XW1QU0B2M=>
# local node wireguard listening port
ListenPort = 51820

# remote node
[Peer]
# remote node's publickey
PublicKey = <i.e. Rq7QEe2g3qIjDftMu...knBGS9mvJDCa4WQg=>
# remote node's public ip address or dns address
Endpoint = remotenode.mydomainname.com:51820
# remote node's interface address
AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.2/32
PersistentKeepalive = 21

Triple Node Setup ( i.e. 1 block producer, 2 relay nodes)

# local node WireGuard Configuration
[Interface]
# local node address
Address = 10.0.0.1/32
# local node private key
PrivateKey = <i.e. SJ6ygM3csa36...+pO4XW1QU0B2M=>
# local node wireguard listening port
ListenPort = 51820

# remote node 1 config
[Peer]
# remote node's publickey
PublicKey = <i.e. R11q7QEe2g3qIjDftMu...knBGdd2mvJDCaasde=>
# remote node's public ip address or dns address
Endpoint = remotenode1.mydomainname.com:51820
# remote node's interface address
AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.2/32
PersistentKeepalive = 21

# remote node 2 config
[Peer]
# remote node 2's publickey
PublicKey = <i.e. ESDd7QEe2g3qIjDftMu...knBGS9mvJDCa4WQg=>
# remote node 2's public ip address or dns address
Endpoint = remotenode2.mydomainname.com:51820
# remote node 2's interface address
AllowedIPs = 10.0.0.3/32
PersistentKeepalive = 21

🧱 Configuring Your Firewall / Port Forwarding

You must allow traffic on port 51820 UDP to your node.

To configure your firewall / port forwarding, type:

sudo ufw allow 51820/udp
sudo ufw allow from 10.0.0.0/16 to any
# check the firewall rules
sudo ufw verbose

🔗 Setting Up Autostart with systemd

Setup systemd on both your local node and remote node.

Add the service to systemd.

sudo systemctl enable [email protected]
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Start wireguard.

sudo systemctl start wg-quick@wg0

Check the status.

sudo systemctl status wg-quick@wg0

✅ Verifying the Connection

Check the status of the interfaces by running wg

sudo wg

## Example Output
# interface: wg0
#  public key: rZLBzslvFtEJ...JdfX4XSwk=
#  private key: (hidden)
#  listening port: 51820

#peer:
#  endpoint: 12.34.56.78:51820
#  allowed ips: 10.0.0.2/32
#  latest handshake: 15 seconds ago
#  transfer: 500 KiB received, 900 KiB sent
#  persistent keepalive: every 21 seconds

Verify ping works between nodes.

ping 10.0.0.2

# if triple node configuration
ping 10.0.0.3

Cardano-specific Configuration

Review and update your topology.json file(s) to ensure that the address key in the localRoots section matches this new tunneled IP address, and not the usual public node IP address.

Dual node setup

Example: topology.json on blockproducer { "address": "10.0.0.2", "port": 6000 },

topology.json on **relaynode1 ** { "address": "10.0.0.1", "port": 6000 },

Triple node setup

Example: topology.json on blockproducer { "address": "10.0.0.2", "port": 6000 },

{ "address": "10.0.0.3", "port": 6000 },

topology.json on **relaynode1 ** { "address": "10.0.0.1", "port": 6000 },

{ "address": "10.0.0.3", "port": 6000 },

topology.json on relaynode2 { "address": "10.0.0.1", "port": 6000 },

{ "address": "10.0.0.2", "port": 6000 },

Wireguard setup is complete.

🛑 Stopping and Disabling WireGuard

To stop and disable WireGuard, type:

sudo systemctl stop wg-quick@wg0
sudo systemctl disable [email protected]
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
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