Syncthing traffic dataflow question

[greenfalcon (Jason)]

Good afternoon,

I have a wireguard server set up at Location A. I have a syncthing client set up at location A.

I have devices at Location B & C both with wireguard clients. I have single syncthing clients at both location B and C.

My question is this, when files are updating, do files somehow flow directly between locations B and C (P2P) or is the data actually flowing through location A in order to reach C (In regards to Location B).

In summary, wondering if I am actually achieving pure p2p when using something like a vpn for remote clients.

Thanks!

[Arneko]

Hello and welcome,

this depends entirely on how you set up your cluster. If you set up your cluster in a way that every device knows every other device, then what you call “p2p” is essentially what you get. If you have A and B only know C, then every transfer has to go through C.

This is not a p2p application like bittorrent, where you essentially do not care where the data comes from.

In Syncthing you select the peers you trust, or “have them selected for you” (e.g. by yourself ) via the Introducer Configuration — Syncthing documentation

[greenfalcon (Jason)]

Thanks Arneko,

I have it set up so that all devices see one another via Syncthing. I have the Syncthing setup at Location A set up as an introducer.

I am just wondering how data can go directly from Location B to Location C without going through the wireguard device at location A.

Connections show as follows:

Location A: Address TCP WAN 192.168.20.10:22000 Location B: Address TCP WAN 50.1xx.xxx.xxx:22000 Location C: Address TCP WAN 76.1xx.xxx.xxx:22000

Is Syncthing essentially using 192.168.20.10 to introduce 50.1xx to 76.1.xx and they go out their ISP’s to the other locations or is this traffic ultimately going through 192.168.20.1 (router) and back out to 50.1xx?

Thanks so much!