Datum Direct Tunnels (No Proxy Edge)

[bmertens-datum]

There are several use cases where a Datum tunnel directly between clients, without using the proxy edge, could be valuable.
Examples include dev to dev connections for QA, debugging, or quick collaboration, machine to machine communication that avoids the public internet, and connections into the Galactic VPC that extend a private network anywhere HTTPS can reach.
This raises questions about how much responsibility Datum Cloud should take on for these connections.
Open questions

Management and visibility

• Should Datum manage or monitor these tunnels at all?
• If so, what level of visibility makes sense. Connection status only, basic traffic metrics, or something more?
• Should we support start and stop from the datum cloud?

Identity and trust

• Should private certificate creation be part of tunnel provisioning?
• Do tunnels get identities from Datum?

Naming and discovery

• Should we support .local domains or similar private naming to give endpoints easy to remember, non public names?

Server App

• In addition to the Datum Desktop app, should we offer a headless Datum Tunnel service that runs on servers to support always on, machine to machine, and private network connectivity use cases?

What other questions should we be asking?