Welcome to WebSwitch

WebSwitch helps to publish web sites running at intranet to Internet visitors easily.

WebSwitch includes two simple programs: a hub and a plug.

The hub:

runs as your Internet web server for Internet visitors to access your published web sites.

accepts incoming connections from plugs to get your web sites published.

The plug:

runs in your intranet as client of your intranet site.

uses outgoing TCP connections to the hub to publish your intranet site.

How it works

The WebSwitch hub should be running as a web server on an Internet host so that both visitors and plugs can reach it at any time.

Then the WebSwitch plug should be started on proper intranet host so that it can access both the hub and the intranet web site. Once started, the plug will connect to the hub to advertise the sites to be published.

Then visitors can access the DNS the sites which will all point to the hub. The hub will forward visitors' requests to intranet sites through the plugs as shown in this diagram. .

Installation

WebSwitch is written in Go programming language, thus you can install it from source with:

 go get github.com/yf13/webswitch

To build the binaries from source, you can use the "go instrall" commnand like:

cd $GOPATH/github.com/yf13/webswtich/webx_plug; go install
cd $GOPATH/github.com/yf13/webswitch/webx_hub; go install

The output executable binaries can be found at $GOPATH/bin, such as

$ ls -l $GOPATH/bin/webx
-rwxr-xr-x 1 u u 7214992 Jun 11 19:35 /home/user/go/bin/webx_hub*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 u u 7198424 Jun 11 19:35 /home/user/go/bin/webx_plug*

Note that current version also requires [WebSocket] (https://github.com/gorilla/websocket).

Simple Usage

On the public server pointed by www.example.com, start the hub like:

   webx_hub

On the intranet where intranet site listens at localhost:8080, start the plug using:

   webx_plug -hub ws://www.example.com:8081/_webx -hosts www.example.com:8080 -rhosts http://localhost:8080

Then from a client host use a browser or cURL tool to access http://www.example.com:8080.

Note that since the intranet site listens on localhost only, it can't be reached from the client host directly. However with WebSwitch, the site can be accessed after publishing on the hub..

Serious Usage

For serious usage, secured plug connections may be preferred based on your network toplogy. proper certificates should be supplied to both programs, see coomand options for more details.

Command Options

The hub program accepts the following options:

  -cert string
      public cert file (.pem) w/ CA and SANs
  -http_ports string
      comma separated ports for http clients. (default ":8080")
  -https_ports string
      comma separated ports for https clients. (default ":8443")
  -key string
      private key file (.pem)
  -path string
      hub resource path. (default "/_webx")
  -plug string
      port for plugs. (default ":8081")

The plug program accepts the following options:

  -ca string
      root CA pem: ca.crt
  -cert string
      plug public signed cert.crt.
  -hosts string
      comma separated virtual hosts (e.g. 'ibm.com:8080,hp.com')
  -hub string
      hub's URL to plug into. (e.g. wss://hub:8443/_webx)
  -key string
      plug private key.pem.
  -limit int
      size limit, 0 is unlimited.
  -retry int
      redial waiting seconds (default 60)
  -rhosts string
      comma separated corresponding real hosts (e.g. 'http://localhost:8081,http://localhost:8082')

Use "-h" option to learn the command line options for webx_hub and webx_plug programs.

Limitations

Web sites using WebSocket is not supported yet;

License

WebSwitch is BSD licensed, see the LICENSE file for details.