General question about Router in Openziti

Support General Questions
1

Hi:

I just want to clarify the concept of openziti edge router.
What it’s different from a physical router ?

2

By "physical router", I expect you mean an actual device that is routing IP (layer 2/3) traffic. The idea is basically the exact same except instead of linking two distinct IP networks, it's for connecting OpenZiti SDK clients.

So it's the same basic idea, but instead of routing ip packets from source to destination, it routes "open ziti traffic" from source to destination.

That make enough sense? If not let us know and we'll go from there :slight_smile:

4

I am wondering that is it possible to zitify or to enroll any device that can connect Internet ?
For example, can I zitify / enroll an IoT device, such as a webcam, a TV, or a smart speaker ?
How to assign identity and JWT to each device. And, how enroll them into ziti network ?

5

To "officially" zitify something you'd need to embed the SDK into the application code so it likely wouldn't happen with an IOT device. However, you could certainly apply a non-zitified approach to this. For example, I have a ziti overlay network that I use to access my Home Assistant from outside the home. I haven't exposed my Home Assistant to the internet, rather, I allowed it access to my ziti network specifically and now, when I'm connected to my network on an authorized device, I can view my smart devices in my home. You can read how I did that here

I did the same with my CCTV cameras, my Network Attached Storage device, and even made my website, which is hosted on AWS, only accessible through my ziti network.

Here are some other articles that might give you some insight into how this is done but of course, feel free to ask questions here as well.
Accessing NAS
Accessing MineCraft

6

Hi:

I have read the two articles I Created a Zero Trust Overlay Network to Access HomeAssistant and Free Secure Access to NAS From Anywhere .

There are some techincal points I am not clear:

  1. In the I Created a Zero Trust Overlay Network to Access HomeAssistant , what is the function of the Raspberry Pi device, or what does it do ?

  2. After connecting the webcam to ziti network, if I want to connect the webcam in my home from somewhere else, to watch the live video, should I use the original OEM’s APP or I should connect it through web-browser with specific address?

7

The raspberry pi is what I use to host the Home Assistant software. It's a very basic mini computer used for running software.

I think that's going to depend on your use case. If it's an app on your phone, I'm not sure exactly how that would work. In my case, my DVR for my CCTV setup has an IP address and a port so I just visit that IP address and port to then login to my DVR's software to view the video feeds.

I do actually have my app accessing the DVR through a ziti network but, the app allows you to specify the host and port so, in the app, I just tell it that the DVR is at http://berlhome.amcrest.ziti:80 which is actually the address of the ziti service. If it's an app that auto-detects the device, and doesn't allow you to specify the address, I'm not sure off-hand how that would work.

If your camera supports using rtsp (many do), you could setup a ziti config that listens on that rtsp address. Then visit the ziti service on a browser or app instead of the rtsp address.