Network WebSocket-to-TCP proxy

Free WebSocket-to-TCP proxy using Network

You can find public proxies here https://ws-to-tcp.hazae41.me/

Getting started

Hosting

Cloud-hosting

You can easily deploy it as a Dockerized web service to cloud-hosting providers such as render.com.

Prices are ~$5 for the cheapest hosting. Do not use free tiers as they may have high downtimes.

Just fork this repository on your GitHub account and select it on your cloud hosting platform.

Then setup environment variables (see list below)

Self-hosting

You just need

• Docker (e.g. for Ubuntu)
• Make (e.g. sudo apt-get install make)
• Git (e.g. sudo apt-get install git)

Then clone the repository (or fork-then-clone)

git clone https://github.com/hazae41/network-ws-to-tcp-proxy && cd ./network-ws-to-tcp-proxy

Setup environment variables (see list below) by creating a .env.local file

cp ./.env.example ./.env.local && nano ./.env.local

You can then:

• Build the latest commit and latest environment variables

make build

• Start and open console (kill with ctrl+c; close with ctrl+p then ctrl+q)

make start

• Show logs

make logs

• Open console (kill with ctrl+c; close with ctrl+p then ctrl+q)

make open

• Stop all instances

make stop

• Clean all builds

make clean

• Update to latest version

git reset --hard && git checkout $(git tag | sort -V | tail -1) 

You can enable HTTPS by either using Cloudflare as a HTTPS-to-HTTP reverse proxy, by configuring Nginx as a HTTPS-to-HTTP reverse proxy on your node, or by setting CERT and KEY.

Environment variables

PORT (default to 8080)

Don't set if cloud-hosting

The exposed port

e.g. 8080

CERT and KEY (optional)

Don't set if cloud-hosting

The paths to your TLS certificate and private key

e.g. ./tls/fullchain.pem and ./tls/privkey.pem

PRIVATE_KEY_ZERO_HEX (required)

Your Ethereum private key as a 0x-prefixed base16 string.

This account must have some xDAI (gas on Gnosis chain).

e.g. 0x35609a4c7e0334d76e15d107c52ee4e9beab1199556cef78fd8624351c0e2c8c

SIGNALER_URL_LIST (recommended)

A comma-separated list of signaler url in order to publish your node there and be on the market

This is usually a wss: url

e.g. wss://signal.node0.hazae41.me

SIGNALED_URL (recommended)

The public url for contacting your node over WebSocket

e.g. wss://myrpc.example.com or wss://something.onrender.com

Protocol

Connect to the proxy via WebSocket with the following URL query parameters

• session -> A unique private random unguessable string for your session (e.g. crypto.randomUUID())
• hostname -> TCP target hostname (e.g. google.com)
• port -> TCP target port (e.g. 80 for HTTP, 443 for HTTPS)

e.g. ws://localhost:8000/?hostname=google.com&port=80&session=22deac58-7e01-4ddb-b9c4-07c73a32d1b5

The connection then consists of two duplexes

• you send/receive bytes to talk with the TCP target
• you send/receive strings to talk with the proxy via JSON-RPC

Price

The price is 1 wei = 1 byte of communication

• Your balance is withdrawn when you send bytes to the TCP target
• Your balance is withdrawn when the TCP target sends you bytes

You MUST pay before talking with the TCP target

All connections are closed when your balance is negative

So you must count how many bytes you sent/received and pay when your balance is low

JSON-RPC

The proxy accepts the following JSON-RPC methods

net_get

{
  jsonrpc: "2.0",
  id: 123,
  method: "net_get"
}

Returns the Network parameters as { chainIdString, contractZeroHex, receiverZeroHex, nonceZeroHex, minimumZeroHex }

net_tip

{
  jsonrpc: "2.0",
  id: 123,
  method: "net_tip",
  params: [string]
}

Params contains a Network secret as a 0x-prefixed base16 string of length 64

e.g.

{
  jsonrpc: "2.0",
  id: 123,
  method: "net_tip",
  params: ["0xe353e28d6b6a21a8188ef68643e4b93d41bca5baa853965a6a0c9ab7427138b0"]
}

It will return the value added to your balance as a decimal bigint string

{
  jsonrpc: "2.0",
  id: 123,
  result: "123456789123456789"
}