Current Dante status

This page describes the current status of Dante. The latest public version is Dante 1.4.3.

Highlights

• 24/7 support available from the people who wrote it and know it best.
• Source code available under a liberal BSD/CMU-type license.
• Advanced access control mechanisms.
• Extensive logging possibilities.
• Network diagnosis and generation of alarms related to detected problems.
• IPv6 support.
• Supports GSS-API (Kerberos) based authentication and strong encryption.
• Supports server-chaining (currently only for TCP connect).
• Integrates with LDAP and Active Directory authorisation (via the LDAP module).
• Bandwidth management (via the Bandwidth module).
• Port control and redirection support (via the Redirect module).
• Session management and control.
• Compatible with Bloomberg clients.

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.

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 router with UPnP support. This type of router 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.

Supported platforms

Dante should run on most Unix/Linux platforms. Windows is not supported. At least the following are known to be supported:

• OpenBSD, FreeBSD
• Linux
• SunOS
• AIX

The following platforms are considered deprecated, and might no longer work fully:

• Tru64 UNIX / OSF/1

The Dante SOCKS client also supports cross compilation to Android.

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 1.4 currently compiles on OS X, but there are problems with both the client (socksify) and the server. The server problems appear to be related to OS X bugs last checked, making the Dante server close sessions prematurely due to occasionally problems with TCP and EOF detection on OSX.

Desired features

This sections gives an overview over some of the features desired, but still missing from Dante and not currently being worked on. If you wish to finance development of these, or other features, please contact us.

Please see the survey for more information and how you can influence the priority of new features.

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