Barefoot -- A free port bouncer for UNIX
The Barefoot server is a scalable user-space port bouncer that can be used to forward, or bounce, TCP connections and UDP packets destined for an address on the host the Barefoot server runs on, to any other host or address.
To these other hosts, it will appear as if the connection and packets are coming from the machine the Barefoot server runs on, rather than from the original host. The Barefoot server thus functions a little like a traditional proxy, but on the server side.
Barefoot additionally has support for using proxy protocols on the outgoing side, and can relay incoming traffic out via a SOCKS server, or a HTTP proxy supporting the CONNECT command. At the moment, using a proxy for outgoing traffic is only supported for the TCP protocol.
The Barefoot server is designed to be used at larger sites that need to bounce traffic from many simultaneous clients, while at the same time offering detailed access control, logging, resource control (via separately purchasable commercial modules), and other features related to controlling the behaviour of the traffic and the Barefoot server.
Developed by Inferno Nettverk A/S, Barefoot is released under a BSD/CMU-type license and comes with complete source code. Inferno Nettverk A/S provides various commercial services related to Barefoot, including support, customised installations/tuning, development, porting and embedding. For more information about support, see the support page.
Configuration and setup is described in the configuration pages.
Several commercial modules providing additional functionality are also available. For more information see the module page.
Recent news
- 2012-05-16:A new major release of Barefoot has been made available by Inferno Nettverk A/S; Barefoot version 1.4.0. The announcement has a full overview of the new features.
- 2011-05-23:Today Inferno Nettverk A/S makes available the 1.0.0 release of Barefoot. Full details can be found in the announcement.
- 2011-03-31:We are happy to announce the first publicly available release of Barefoot, version 1.0.0-pre1. The announcement has the full details.