Network Requester

Nym Network Requester was built in the building nym section. If you haven’t yet built Nym and want to run the code, go there first.

Any syntax in <> brackets is a user’s unique variable. Exchange with a corresponding name without the <> brackets.

Current version

The last version before migration to nym-node was 1.1.33.

Preliminary steps

Make sure you do the preparation listed in the preliminary steps page before setting up your Network Requester.

Network Requester Whitelist

If you have access to a server, you can run the Network Requester, which allows Nym users to send outbound requests from their local machine through the Mixnet to a server, which then makes the request on their behalf, shielding them (and their metadata) from clearnet, untrusted and unknown infrastructure, such as email or message client servers.

By default the Network Requester is not an open proxy (although it can be used as one). It uses a file called allowed.list (located in ~/.nym/service-providers/network-requester/<NETWORK-REQUESTER-ID>/) as a whitelist for outbound requests.

Note: If you run Network Requester as a part of the Exit Gateway (suggested setup) the allowed.list will be stored in ~/.nym/gateways/<ID>/data/network-requester-data/allowed.list.

Any request to a URL which is not on this list will be blocked.

On startup, if this file is not present, the requester will grab the default whitelist from Nym’s default list automatically.

This default whitelist is useful for knowing that the majority of Network Requesters are able to support certain apps ‘out of the box’.

Operators of a Network Requester are of course free to edit this file and add the URLs of services they wish to support to it! You can find instructions below on adding your own URLs or IPs to this list.

The domains and IPs on the default whitelist can be broken down by application as follows:

# Keybase
keybaseapi.com
s3.amazonaws.com
amazonaws.com
twitter.com
keybase.io
gist.githubusercontent.com

# Used to for uptime healthcheck (see the section on testing your requester below for more)
nymtech.net

# Blockstream Green Bitcoin Wallet
blockstream.info
blockstream.com
greenaddress.it

# Electrum Bitcoin Wallet
electrum.org

# Helios Ethereum Client
alchemy.com
lightclientdata.org
p2pify.com

# Telegram - these IPs have been copied from https://core.telegram.org/resources/cidr.txt as Telegram does
# not seem to route by domain as the other apps on this list do
91.108.56.0/22
91.108.4.0/22
91.108.8.0/22
91.108.16.0/22
91.108.12.0/22
149.154.160.0/20
91.105.192.0/23
91.108.20.0/22
185.76.151.0/24
2001:b28:f23d::/48
2001:b28:f23f::/48
2001:67c:4e8::/48
2001:b28:f23c::/48
2a0a:f280::/32

# nym matrix server
nymtech.chat

# generic matrix server backends
vector.im
matrix.org

# monero desktop - mainnet
212.83.175.67
212.83.172.165
176.9.0.187
88.198.163.90
95.217.25.101
136.244.105.131
104.238.221.81
66.85.74.134
88.99.173.38
51.79.173.165

# monero desktop - stagenet
162.210.173.150
176.9.0.187
88.99.173.38
51.79.173.165

# alephium 
alephium.org

Network Requester Directory

You can find a list of Network Requesters running the default whitelist in the explorer. This list comprises of the NRs running as infrastructure for NymConnect.

We are currently working on a smart-contract based solution more in line with how Mix Nodes and Gateways announce themselves to the network.

Viewing command help

To begin, move to /target/release directory from which you run the node commands:

cd target/release

The ./nym-network-requester --help command can be used to show a list of available parameters.

You can check the required parameters for available commands by running:

./nym-network-requester <COMMAND> --help

Adding --no-banner startup flag will prevent Nym banner being printed even if run in tty environment.

Initializing and running your Network Requester

The Network Requester needs to be initialized before it can be run. This is required for the embedded nym-client to connect successfully to the Mixnet. We want to specify an <ID> using the --id command and give it a value of your choice. The following command will achieve that:

 ./nym-network-requester init --id <YOUR_ID>

Now that we have initialized our network-requester, we can start it with the following command:

 ./nym-network-requester run --id <YOUR_ID>

Using your Network Requester

The next thing to do is use your requester, share its address with friends (or whoever you want to help privacy-enhance their app traffic). Is this safe to do? If it was an open proxy, this would be unsafe, because any Nym user could make network requests to any system on the internet.

To make things a bit less stressful for administrators, the Network Requester drops all incoming requests by default. In order for it to make requests, you need to add specific domains to the allowed.list file at $HOME/.nym/service-providers/network-requester/allowed.list or if Network Requester is ran as a part of Exit Gateway, the allowed.list will be stored in ~/.nym/gateways/<ID>/data/network-requester-data/allowed.list

Global vs local allow lists

Your Network Requester will check for a domain against 2 lists before allowing traffic through for a particular domain or IP.

• The first list is the default list on the nymtech.net server. Your Requester will not check against this list every time, but instead will keep a record of accepted domains in memory.

• The second is the local allowed.list file.

Supporting custom domains with your Network Requester

It is easy to add new domains and services to your Network Requester - simply find out which endpoints (both URLs and raw IP addresses are supported) you need to whitelist, and then add these endpoints to your allowed.list.

In order to keep things more organised, you can now use comments in the allow.list like the example at the top of this page.

How to go about this? Have a look in your nym-network-requester config directory:

# nym-network-requester binary
ls -lt $HOME/.nym/service-providers/network-requester/*/data | grep "list"

# nym-gateway binary
ls -lt $HOME/.nym/gateways/*/data/network-requester-data | grep "list"

# returns: allowed.list  unknown.list

We already know that allowed.list is what lets requests go through. All unknown requests are logged to unknown.list. If you want to try using a new client type, just start the new application, point it at your local socks client (configured to use your remote nym-network-requester), and keep copying URLs from unknown.list into allowed.list (it may take multiple tries until you get all of them, depending on the complexity of the application). Make sure to delete the copied ones in unknown.list and restart your Exit Gateway or standalone Network Requester.

If you are adding custom domains, please note that whilst they may appear in the logs of your network-requester as something like api-0.core.keybaseapi.com:443, you only need to include the main domain name, in this instance keybaseapi.com

Running an open proxy

If you really want to run an open proxy, perhaps for testing purposes for your own use or among a small group of trusted friends, it is possible to do so. You can disable Network checks by passing the flag --open-proxy flag when you run it. If you run in this configuration, you do so at your own risk.

Testing your Network Requester

1. Make sure nymtech.net is in your allowed.list (remember to restart your Network Requester).

2. Ensure that your nym-network-requester is initialized and running.

3. In another terminal window, run the following:

curl -x socks5h://localhost:1080 https://nymtech.net/.wellknown/connect/healthcheck.json

This command should return the following:

{ "status": "ok" }