Architecture

This article explains Arctic's system architecture, the components involved, and how they work together.

System Overview

Arctic is a distributed network routing system consisting of three main components:

Arctic Agent

The Arctic agent is the central orchestrator. It:

• Manages cluster state and configuration
• Exposes the HTTP API for management
• Coordinates network components automatically
• Participates in state synchronization with other peers

Pegasus (TProxy Service)

Pegasus handles TCP traffic using Linux TProxy (transparent proxy):

• Intercepts TCP packets and proxies them to remote peers
• Preserves original source addresses when Transparent Mode is enabled
• Supports QoS with bandwidth limiting

Tempest (IP Tunnel Service)

Tempest handles non-TCP traffic using encrypted tunnels:

• Creates encrypted tunnels between peers
• Routes UDP, ICMP, and other IP protocols
• Supports multiple simultaneous peer connections

Network Integration

Arctic integrates with the Linux network stack to route traffic:

MACVLAN Interfaces

When services require dedicated interfaces, Arctic creates MACVLAN interfaces:

• Provides isolated network identity for service traffic
• Enables traffic matching based on interface
• Allows binding applications to specific service addresses

Traffic Routing

Arctic routes traffic based on:

• Source and destination IP ranges (CIDR)
• Interface bindings
• Protocol type (TCP vs non-TCP)

High Availability

Arctic does not have a single point of failure:

• Each agent operates independently
• State is replicated across peers
• Any peer can handle API requests
• Services continue if individual peers fail

For production deployments, consider:

• Deploying 3+ agents for redundancy
• Using a load balancer for API access
• Monitoring agent health with alerting

Resource Usage

Typical resource consumption:

Resource usage scales with:

• Number of active services
• Traffic volume through proxies
• Number of peers in the cluster

See Also

• Routing - Traffic flow details
• Clustering - State synchronization
• Agent Configuration