Last week was my first week at NetFoundry, where I’m the Senior Developer Advocate. It was fun, and it was also like drinking from a high-tech, encrypted firehose!
To mark the occasion, I sat down with NetFoundry’s Head of Developer Experience (and also developer; he does a lot!) Clint Dovholuk for my first episode on Ziti TV. We spent an hour diving into the “meat” of Zero Trust, networking architecture, and why your traditional VPN might be the “castle and moat” that finally (and unintentionally) lets the invaders in.
If you’re a developer who has always viewed networking infrastructure as someone else’s problem (and as a recovering mobile developer, I’m certainly guilty on that charge), here’s the deep-dive breakdown of what I learned in my first week on the job.
Notes from the video
Zero Trust
The term “Zero Trust” is everywhere. You can’t throw a rock on the tech internet without hitting a marketing department claiming they’ve “solved” it, and Clint and I joked about the “eye-roll” factor of the term.
Clint said that Zero Trust might be better understood if you called it Explicit Trust. In the old “Castle and Moat” model, if you’re in the castle, you’re trusted. In the OpenZiti model, we assume the network is already compromised. You have zero privileges until they are explicitly granted based on:
-
Authentication: “Who are you?”
-
Authorization: “What are you allowed to do?”
A lot of resources will authenticate and authorize you through some kind of sign-in process. Clint describes OpenZiti as moving the process out by one layer into the network so you can’t even connect to an OpenZiti-protected resource without being authenticated and authorized first.
Or, to quote Clint:
With OpenZiti and Zero Trust, if you have a service that’s protected by OpenZiti, you first need to authenticate to the OpenZiti overlay network, and then you need to have an authorization that permits the operation you’re trying to perform.
OpenZiti also uses a Zero Privilege approach. Once again, to quote Clint:
The whole idea is that you have no privileges until you are granted privileges, and only then are you able to take whatever operation you want.
“Jay double-you tee” vs. “Jawt”
Apparently we’re on different sides of this debate. Clint prefers referring to JWTs as “Jay double-U tees,” while I prefer to call them “Jawts.”
OpenZiti and NetFoundry: How are they related?
OpenZiti is the network overlay project, and NetFoundry is the company behind OpenZiti.
The “Open” in OpenZiti comes from the fact that it’s an open source project. This is in keeping with the philosophy that a cybersecurity product should be open source because making source code publicly visible enables a community of developers, analysts, and other experts to audit, test, and improve it.
If you have the time, tech skills, and inclination, you can use OpenZiti and run your own overlay network at zero cost — if you don’t count the cost of said time and tech skills. It’s all up for grabs here.
However, if you’d rather spend your time and technical expertise elsewhere, especially once your needs get up to scale, such as on your main line of business, NetFoundry is here to provide you with a managed OpenZiti platform.
It’s easy to run one controller and two routers on your laptop. But when you’re an enterprise managing a fleet of routers, handling upgrades, and monitoring metrics, you’re suddenly in the “overlay business” instead of your actual business. NetFoundry is the “Easy Button” that manages OpenZiti for you [19:10].
The quickstart
Clint then gave a quick demonstration of the OpenZiti quickstart, which creates a fully functional OpenZiti network overlay on your system in a couple of seconds. This overlay has both a router and a controller, and each has a specific job.
Controller
The OpenZiti controller [24:36] serves as the brain of the overlay network. It’s the authority responsible for managing the state of the environment and ensuring that all connections are secure and verified before traffic ever flows.
Its responsibilities can be broken down into several key functions:
1. API surface and management
The controller surfaces several critical APIs that different components of the network interact with. These include:
-
Edge Client API: Used by SDKs and tunnelers to authenticate and discover services.
-
Management API: The interface used by administrators (often via the Ziti CLI) to configure the network, such as creating new identities or defining service policies.
-
Fabric and OIDC APIs: Used for internal mesh communication and identity provider integration.
2. The authority on explicit trust
The controller is the primary decision-maker for the two pillars of Zero Trust security:
-
Authentication: It verifies the identity of any user, device, or “workload” attempting to connect (answering “Who are you?”).
-
Authorization: It checks configured policies to determine exactly what that identity is allowed to access (answering “What are you allowed to do?”).
Unlike a traditional network where a firewall might be open by default, the controller ensures the network is dark by default. No connection is permitted until the controller has explicitly authorized it.
3. Bootstrapping trust, a.k.a. enrollment
The controller is the starting point for bringing new devices into the fold through a process called “Bootstrapping Trust”.
-
It issues One-Time Tokens (OTTs) (essentially signed JSON Web Tokens) that are delivered to users.
-
When a client initiates enrollment, the controller validates the token and facilitates a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) exchange.
-
The end result is a strong, cryptographically verifiable identity that the client uses for all future secure communications.
4. Orchestrating the mesh
While the controller does not actually handle the data traffic (that is the job of the routers), it provides the “map.” It coordinates with the edge routers to broker data channels, ensuring that when a client “dials” a service, the routers know how to steer that traffic to the correct destination.
Router
The OpenZiti router [26:09] is the workhorse of the network. While the controller acts as the brain and makes policy decisions, routers constitute the data plane: the actual infrastructure that moves bits from point A to point B.
According to Clint, the router’s job can be broken down into these core functions:
1. Forming the mesh overlay
The routers are responsible for creating the “mesh overlay network”. Unlike a traditional hub-and-spoke networking model, these routers connect to one another to form an interconnected fabric. Even if you start with just one router, you can deploy many others to extend this mesh.
2. Brokering data channels
The primary job of a router is to broker data channels. When an application wants to send data, the router facilitates the creation of a secure path. It effectively “steers” the traffic through the mesh to ensure it reaches the intended destination router and, ultimately, the target service.
3. Serving as the entry point for clients
Everything in OpenZiti is technically an SDK client, whether it’s a standalone app or a “tunneler.” These clients connect directly to the routers to form the necessary channels for communication. The router acts as the listener that accepts these connections once the controller has given the “okay.”
4. Shuttling the actual data
The router is where the heavy lifting happens. It is the component that actually sends your data from one side to the other. While the controller handles the logic of authentication and authorization, it never touches the application data itself. That task is handled entirely by the routers.
5. Enforcing the “dark network”
By acting as the only point of entry into the mesh, routers help enforce the “dark by default” philosophy. Unless a client has been explicitly authorized by the controller, a router will not broker a channel for it, effectively keeping the protected services invisible to the public internet, and by extension, unauthorized and malicious parties.
The coolest part for a developer? You can spin this all up on your local machine in about seven seconds with a simple ziti edge quickstart [23:00].
Why not just use a VPN?
One of my questions was the one every developer asks: “Why can’t I just use a VPN?”
Clint insists that an OpenZiti overlay actually is a VPN [34:05] in the broadest sense, in that it’s a virtual network that’s closed off to unauthorized parties. It just functions much differently than the “one big mush” of traditional VPNs, which are open by default, and once you’re in, you can see everything.
On the other hand, OpenZiti is dark by default [35:45]. If you have a server on the open internet, it usually has an open port (such as port 22 for SSH or 443 for HTTPS). With Ziti, you close those ports entirely. The service becomes “dark,” and the ports are invisible, and you can’t attack what you can’t even find.
The “magic dance” of bootstrapping trust
I’ll admit, when I first tried to set up a client and server, I got a little lost in the “magic dance” of certificates. Clint called this process bootstrapping trust [38:47].
It starts with a One-Time Token (OTT), which is a signed JWT, and the process goes like this:
-
The admin creates an identity on the controller [41:09].
-
The client uses the token to find the Controller’s URL [43:11].
-
The handshake takes place, where the client verifies the controller’s certificate, and they exchange a CSR (Certificate Signing Request) [44:43].
-
Strong identity: The result is a JSON file containing a key that must be protected like a secret.
AI Agents and the MCP Gateway
We also took a detour into Agentic AI. Clint has been using MCP (Model Context Protocol) Gateways to let Claude interact with the Ziti CLI.
The breakthrough here is efficiency and security. By using an MCP Gateway, you don’t have to give your raw credentials to the AI [57:02]. Plus, by using a targeted MCP server, you can strip a massive 100k data object down to a 10k summary, saving a fortune in tokens [59:12].
Real-world use: From blue bubbles to drones
I asked Clint who is actually using this in the wild. The “Adopters” list is growing, including projects like Blue Bubbles (the tool that brings iMessage features to Android) [50:33].
But the stakes get higher. We discussed Zero Trust Drones and secure communications on the battlefield [52:12]. When you’re in a high-stakes environment like Ukraine, having secure, “dark” comms is a necessity, not a luxury.
More coming soon!
This was the first of many Ziti TV livestreams featuring Clint and Yours Truly. The next one’s scheduled for Friday, April 30th at 11:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern / 8:00 a.m. U.S. Pacific / 1500 UTC, and you can view past livestreams in the Live section of the OpenZiti YouTube channel.
Watch the full replay here: Ziti TV: Explaining OpenZiti to the New Guy