libreswan/libreswan
libreswan observed · 2026-10-20
Health v2 · maintenance only
99/100
- Activity 100
- Release rhythm 98
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_license
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-10-21. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: 28
- age_days: 4990
- days_rel: 15
- days_push: 1
- n_releases_24m: 8
Adoption not part of the score
1009 stars · 266 forks observed · 2026-10-20
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-09-07, confidence 0.95
Libreswan is a free software implementation of the IPsec VPN protocol and its Internet Key Exchange (IKEv1/IKEv2) keying protocol, forked from Openswan and descended from FreeS/WAN. It runs primarily on Linux using the kernel XFRM IPsec stack with the NSS crypto library, and is shipped as a package in many Linux distributions.
Use cases
- set up a site-to-site IPsec VPN between offices
- establish IKEv2 tunnels for remote user access
- configure a VPN server with X.509 certificate authentication
- build NAT-traversing IPsec tunnels between Linux hosts
- replace Openswan or FreeS/WAN with a maintained VPN daemon
When to choose
- you need a standards-compliant, actively maintained IPsec/IKE implementation on Linux or BSD
- you want XFRM-based kernel IPsec with X.509, NAT traversal, and FIPS support
- your distribution (Fedora, RHEL, Debian, etc.) ships it and you want vendor-supported VPN
When to avoid
- you need TLS/OpenVPN/WireGuard-style VPNs rather than IPsec
- you target macOS, Windows, or mobile platforms as the primary host
- you want a userspace-only VPN that does not interact with the kernel IPsec stack
Facets
application · maturity stable
security networking security networking privacy censorship-circumvention bsd vpn ipsec ike ikev2 ikev1 xfrm nss freeswan openswan linux
2 sources
- readme: https://github.com/libreswan/libreswan · fetched 2026-10-20 · 40e35a0391a8
- homepage: https://libreswan.org/ · fetched 2026-08-29 · 0fed51ea0e0c
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| libreswan/libreswan | main | 99 |
For agents
markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="libreswan/libreswan")
Data as of 2026-10-19T08:05:51.212177+00:00 · Report a problem