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Current Dante status

This page describes the current status of Dante. The latest public version is Dante 1.3.2

Highlights

Some key highlights of Dante include:

24/7 support available from the people who wrote and know it best.
Liberal BSD/CMU-type license.
Advanced access control mechanisms.
Extensive logging possibilities.
Supports GSS-API (Kerberos) based authentication and strong encryption.
Supports server-chaining (currently only for TCP connect).
Integrates with LDAP and Active Directory (via LDAP module).
Bandwidth management (via Bandwidth module).
Port control and redirection support (via Redirect module).
Session management and control (via Session module).
Compatible with Bloomberg clients.
Can socksify most programs at runtime without requiring recompilation.

Supported protocols

The Dante package consists of two parts: the client and the server. The server supports SOCKS version 4 and version 5, while the client library supports multiple proxy protocols. The current standards/RFCs/drafts are implemented:

Socks protocol version 4:: The first semi-official version of the SOCKS protocol, version 4. Supports TCP, but not UDP.
RFC1928:: SOCKS protocol version 5. This is the current version of the SOCKS protocol. Dante slightly extends RFC1928 by adding an extension which provides a more generic bind(2) functionality allowing servers to accepts connections through the SOCKS server.
RFC1929: Username/password authentication for SOCKS version 5.
RFC1961: GSS-API based authentication for SOCKS version 5.
UPnP: The Dante client supports sending client requests through a UPnP router. This type of proxy supports bind(2)-ing of ports on the router, allowing incoming requests to be received via the UPnP device. This feature requires the miniupnp library by Thomas Bernard.
HTTP proxy: The Dante client supports sending client requests through a web cache/proxy supporting the HTTP CONNECT command. Note that only TCP connect is supported through a HTTP proxy.

Future plans

This sections gives a overview over the current plans for adding new features to Dante. If you wish to finance development of these or other features, please contact us.

Near future

Advanced session control
Advanced realtime process scheduling control (initially on Linux only)

Desired features

The items below are all desired, but not currently being worked on. See the survey for more information and how you can influence their priority.

OS X port.
IPv6 support/gateway (work currently ongoing).
OS performance improvements (e.g., splice(2)).
Improved server-chaining support (UDP and scalability).
Traceroute/improved UDP support.
Transparent proxy functionality.

Application compatibility/portability

The SOCKS libraries should work with most applications without modifications, but there might be problems, either due to limitations in the software or in the SOCKS protocol.

Platform specific problems

Dante 1.3 currently compiles on OS X, but there are problems with both the client (socksify) and the server.