Updates and Packetriot v1.0
Published at July 1, 2020 · 5 min read
Share on:We’re really excited to announce that we’ve finally reach version 1.0 for Packetriot!
About one-and-half years ago in February of 2019 we released Packetriot to the public. It provided standard application tunneling for HTTP/S and TCP applications. Since then we’ve been iterating our client, website and server software.
We added support for automatic certificate management and integration with Let’s Encrypt. We’re still one of the only application tunneling services that provide this integration.
Later we added a monitoring service for the upstream services hosted behind a Packetriot tunnel. This is available for users with Pro+ or higher. This service monitors if the upstream servers the Packetriot client would relay too went down or are not accessible anymore. When this is detected Packetriot will email users to let them know it’s the upstream service is no longer available.
Providers like Pingdom begin charging $10/mo for this sort of service, which Pro+ users receive in additional to application tunneling!
We released a self-hosted version of Packetriot called Spokes. Initially it was a bare-bones server that our standard client would connect to. Through some feature requests from customers we added support for IP firewall filtering, API tokens, registration tokens, a much improved CLI interface and new commands to the Packetriot client to make automation of tunnels possible and simple.
Our client for Packetriot has received many new features throughout the year. We added Instant HTTP/S and TCP service for simple and instant hosting. Our client initially support serving static content or an upstream server. After a few months we added both, a feature more other application tunneling services and clients do not support.
We thought this feature was important because it removes the need for installing a web server. We are constantly looking for ways to make software development more productive.
Our documentation received a much needed overhaul during the Winter of ‘19-‘20. We moved our docs over mkdocs and began hosting them on docs.packetriot.com. They are now searchable on that site and with a sitemap we keep up-to-date, also searchable on Google and other search engines.
In the Spring of ‘20 we overhauled our website. We create a fresh new look and move our CSS framework to Bulma.
Annual Plans
Many customers have asked for the ability to pay annually. In this latest release of Packetriot we added this feature and a new plan.
All annual plans include a one month discount and users can switch easily between monthly and annual plans via the Billings page one you log in. We expanded our Business plan to accomodate 50 tunnels and added a new plan called “Teams” fits in the middle of Pro and this updated Business plan. Teams supports 25 tunnels.
In addition we rounded up our plans to whole dollars (USD). This made introducing, pricing and also discounting our annual plans more simple. All the information for our new plans are provided below.
| Features | Free | Basic | Pro | Teams | Business | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tunnels | 1 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | |
| Ports (TCP) / Tunnel | 1 | 5 | 10 | 10 | 10 | |
| Bandwidth (Monthly) | 1 GB | 1 TB | 4 TB | 4TB | 4TB | |
| Reserved Subdomains | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | ||
| Access Logs | x | x | x | |||
| Service Monitoring | x | x | x | |||
| Firewall | x | x | x | |||
| Priority Support | x | |||||
| – | $0 | $5/mo | $10/mo | $25/mo | $50/mo | |
| – | $0 | $55/yr | $110/yr | $275/yr | $550/yr |
Reserved Subdomains
Since the very beginning we wanted to provide subdomains that users could reserve that would provide more context then pktriot.net. Other services such as ngrok and Pagekite provide reserved subdomains but they just reuse their domain or some slight variation of it, usually a different TLD.
The applications that our users would build and serve behind our tunnels could use a context for what is actually being served.
Is this an application or MVP I’m developing? A media streaming server? A blog or maybe some network infrastructure, etc…
So we purchased some very simple to remember domains and made them available for users to use. The table below provides a list of the domains we support and intend to grow over time.
| Domain | Description |
|---|---|
| betabuild.dev | A domain for developers and designers that want to show off or share projects that works in-progress. |
| reversetunnel.net | Domain for network infrastructure services or operations. |
| mediastreamer.app | Great for use of media streaming and sharing applications like Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and others. |
| pktriot.net | Customize a subdomain using the pktriot.net domain we use to automatically assigned hostnames for tunnels. |
Users with paid plans can reserve a number of subdomains. You can release and request new ones quickly. You assign them to any one tunnel to route traffic to the underlying service. Clients only need to request traffic for that hostname (subdomain + domain name) and it just works!
In the near future we will update the Packetriot client to make it so that you can request, assign and release subdomains from the CLI in our client.
We think subdomains will provide a great value to our users. One of our goals was to make hosting secure and easy plus lower the overall cost for hosting. Not having to purchase a domain and having access to a subdomain that provides a useful and commonly understood context helps us achieve that and do more for our users than our alternatives.
The Future
We’re not done with improving Packetriot. In the short term we will be focusing on new tutorials, videos and blogs to help software developers, designers, self-hosters and gamers learn how they can use Packetriot to host the applications they need or content they create to the rest of Internet.
We’ll also be focusing on customer support and service which we think is critical for Packetriot to grow and be successful.
In the future we’ll be publishing a roadmap for the new features we plan to add. Some features will focus on developer productivity, others will focus on security. We also want to make Packetriot more accessible to more users from all levels of technical experience.
Most importantly, we will continue to listen to our users.
I want to thank all of the people who have chosen to use Packetriot over the alternatives (there are many). Finally, I want to thank our paid subscribers. Your support has continued to motivate and encourage me to continue and complete the work I initially set out to do. Thank you again for supporting my business and this project.
Cheers,
John