Inferno Nettverk A/S, Oslo, Norway
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Inferno Nettverk A/S is pleased to announce a new release of
Dante - a free socks proxy client/server implementation for UNIX.

Dante is being developed by Inferno Nettverk A/S, a UNIX consulting
company located in Oslo Research Park, Norway.

Inferno Nettverk specializes in services related to software development
and porting on UNIX/Linux and embedded/real-time platforms.

Please see http://www.inet.no/english/services.html for more information
about our services.

Dante is free software, available under a BSD-like license.
Inferno Nettverk also provides commercial services related to Dante.
These services include support via phone and email, customized
installations/tuning of Dante, development, porting and embedding.

The Dante software consists of two parts, packed into one archive.
1) The server part, supporting socks v4 and socks v5.
2) The client part, supporting socks v4, socks v5, http v1.0, and UPnP.

In addition to standard socks authentication methods, Dante includes
the following additional methods: pam and rfc931 (ident).

Dante also includes an extension to the socks v4/v5 protocols which
provides a more generic bind(2) functionality, similar to what
non-socks programs expect.  This makes it possible to run standard
server applications, like e.g. ftpd, behind the Dante server.

Compared to the previous release, this version brings amongst other
changes the following:

Generic changes:
 o Markus Moeller (markus_moeller at compuserve.com) contributed support
   for GSSAPI encryption/authentication (RFC 1961) to both the socks
   server and socks client.

   Many thanks to Markus for this and for a lot of help with testing it.
 
Server changes:
 o Fixed a bug/oversight that imposed an artificial limit on the number
   of sockd processes that could be created, even when the load required
   more. 

 o Solaris privilege model support.  Based on patch from
   Mayuresh Nirhali <Mayuresh.Nirhali@Sun.COM.example.com> & co.

 o Patch from Markus Moeller (markus_moeller at compuserve.com)
   to limit the range of udp-ports used between the socks-client
   and the Dante server.
 
Client changes:
 o Improvements to client thread compatibility.  The client library
   should now be mostly threadsafe.

 o Many bugfixes and improved client compatibility.

 o UPnP support in the client, using the miniupnp library by
   Thomas Bernard (http://miniupnp.free.fr/).
 
   Note that only the miniupnp library with releasedate 2009/09/21 
   or later is expected to work with Dante.

See the NEWS file for a more complete list.
Known problems: see the BUGS file.

Notes:
 o The survey at http://www.inet.no/dante/survey.html has been
   updated. Please take the time to fill it out if you are using Dante.
   We use the data from the survey to evaluate possible future
   developments of Dante.

 o Support for the msproxy protocol will likely be removed in the near
   future. If anyone is still using Dante with msproxy and is willing
   to test the code, please contact us.

Special compatibility notes for users upgrading from the previous
official version of Dante:
  Server part:
    o "connecttimeout" has been renamed to "timeout.negotiate".
      The default value has also been reduced from 120 seconds to 30.

    o "iotimeout" has been renamed to "timeout.io".

    o Authentication-checking is by default now disabled on bindreplies
      and udpreplies.  
      We expect few use this feature, but if you do, you can enable it
      by specifying "srchost: checkreplyauth" in sockd.conf.
 
    o A new option has been added: "udp.connectdst".  This controls
      whether the server should connect udp sockets to the destination.
      The default for this release is yes, which improves performance,
      but _may_ be incompatible with some udp-based application protocols.

      Please let us know if you experience problems with some applications
      no longer working. 
 
  Client part:
    o Direct routes are now auto-added for all LAN-addresses and
      proxy-servers found in socks.conf, whereas before network i/o to
      LAN-addresses would also go via the socks-server unless direct routes
      were manually added in socks.conf.
 
      This feature can be disabled by setting the environment variable
      "SOCKS_AUTOADD_LANROUTES" to "no".
 
For more information about Dante, please see "http://www.inet.no/dante/".

For more information about Inferno Nettverk, please see
"http://www.inet.no/inferno.html".