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+# DERP
+
+This directory (and subdirectories) contain the DERP code. The server itself is
+in `../cmd/derper`.
+
+DERP is a packet relay system (client and servers) where peers are addressed
+using WireGuard public keys instead of IP addresses.
+
+It relays two types of packets:
+
+* "Disco" discovery messages (see `../disco`) as the a side channel during [NAT
+  traversal](https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/).
+
+* Encrypted WireGuard packets as the fallback of last resort when UDP is blocked
+  or NAT traversal fails.
+
+## DERP Map
+
+Each client receives a "[DERP
+Map](https://pkg.go.dev/tailscale.com/tailcfg#DERPMap)" from the coordination
+server describing the DERP servers the client should try to use.
+
+The client picks its home "DERP home" based on latency. This is done to keep
+costs low by avoid using cloud load balancers (pricey) or anycast, which would
+necessarily require server-side routing between DERP regions.
+
+Clients pick their DERP home and report it to the coordination server which
+shares it to all the peers in the tailnet. When a peer wants to send a packet
+and it doesn't already have a WireGuard session open, it sends disco messages
+(some direct, and some over DERP), trying to do the NAT traversal. The client
+will make connections to multiple DERP regions as needed. Only the DERP home
+region connection needs to be alive forever.
+
+## DERP Regions
+
+Tailscale runs 1 or more DERP nodes (instances of `cmd/derper`) in various
+geographic regions to make sure users have low latency to their DERP home.
+
+Regions generally have multiple nodes per region "meshed" (routing to each
+other) together for redundancy: it allows for cloud failures or upgrades without
+kicking users out to a higher latency region. Instead, clients will reconnect to
+the next node in the region. Each node in the region is required to to be meshed
+with every other node in the region and forward packets to the other nodes in
+the region. Packets are forwarded only one hop within the region. There is no
+routing between regions. The assumption is that the mesh TCP connections are
+over a VPC that's very fast, low latency, and not charged per byte. The
+coordination server assigns the list of nodes in a region as a function of the
+tailnet, so all nodes within a tailnet should generally be on the same node and
+not require forwarding. Only after a failure do clients of a particular tailnet
+get split between nodes in a region and require inter-node forwarding. But over
+time it balances back out. There's also an admin-only DERP frame type to force
+close the TCP connection of a particular client to force them to reconnect to
+their primary if the operator wants to force things to balance out sooner.
+(Using the `(*derphttp.Client).ClosePeer` method, as used by Tailscale's
+internal rarely-used `cmd/derpprune` maintenance tool)
+
+We generally run a minimum of three nodes in a region not for quorum reasons
+(there's no voting) but just because two is too uncomfortably few for cascading
+failure reasons: if you're running two nodes at 51% load (CPU, memory, etc) and
+then one fails, that makes the second one fail. With three or more nodes, you
+can run each node a bit hotter.
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