Concepts

This section explains the architecture, design decisions, and underlying concepts of Arctic. Understanding these concepts will help you make better decisions when configuring and troubleshooting your deployment.

Core Concepts

Overview

Arctic is a transparent network routing system that enables secure communication between distributed nodes. It consists of:

• Arctic Agent: The core service that manages network configuration
• Pegasus: A TProxy service that handles TCP traffic
• Tempest: A WireGuard-based IP tunnel for non-TCP traffic

These components work together to route traffic based on CIDR rules while maintaining transparency to applications.

Key Principles

Transparency

Traffic routed through Arctic appears to originate from its original source. Applications do not need modification to work with Arctic.

Automatic Configuration

When you create services and routes through the CLI or API, Arctic automatically:

• Creates network interfaces
• Generates firewall rules
• Configures proxy services
• Establishes encrypted tunnels

Distributed State

Cluster state is synchronized across all peers using a gossip protocol. Changes propagate automatically without a central coordinator.

License-Based Trust

Peers trust each other based on shared license verification. Only peers with the same license can join a cluster.

Reading Order

If you are new to Arctic concepts, we recommend reading in this order:

1. Architecture - Understand the components
2. Routing - Learn how traffic flows
3. Clustering - Understand peer synchronization
4. Security - Learn about the trust model