While I enjoy the remote access and virtual LAN chat rooms powered by ZeroTier, I am curious about why ZeroTier is referred to by so many names (SDWAN, VLAN, ZeroTrust, Ad-hoc VPN, Secure LAN, Virtual Ethernet Switch, etc.) on the Internet, and whether there is a technical definition of what it does.
My question is: Is there a formal technical name for the functionalities of ZeroTier (like “Site-to-site VPN”), or is it a too narrow use case to be named? To be specific, the points are:
- Connect neither two sites (Site-to-Site) nor a physical remote site (Remote-Access). All peers join a virtual LAN, different from their own hosted LAN;
- Peers can join and leave dynamically, with zero config;
- Peers can discover each other (i.e., supports network broadcasting).
I have read this post which offered me some insights, such as Mesh VPN (seems to be more emphasis on decentralization trait in the implementation), DMVPN (seems like a marketing term from Cisco), Zero Trust Overlay Network and SD-WAN. But I am not sure which describe these functionalities best.
