# zhuhaow/NEKit

A toolkit for Network Extension Framework

Repository: https://github.com/zhuhaow/NEKit
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/nekit
Homepage: https://zhuhaow.github.io/NEKit
Language: Swift
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Archived: true
Last push: 2020-04-16T15:42:01+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3770, "days_push": 2330, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2816, forks 667 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:23.854321+00:00)

## What it is
NEKit is a Swift toolkit for building iOS/macOS Network Extension apps (NETunnelProvider) that route traffic through proxies to bypass network filtering and censorship. It provides a rule-based proxy engine, tun2socks-style TCP flow reassembly, and a DNS rewriting server, and is explicitly deprecated by its author.

## Use cases
- build an iOS VPN/proxy app with Network Extension
- route traffic through shadowsocks or other proxies based on rules
- implement a rule-based local proxy without Network Extension entitlement
- rewrite DNS requests and responses on-device
- reassemble TCP packets into flows inside a tunnel provider

## When to choose
- you need low-level building blocks for a Network Extension proxy app and are willing to understand and patch the internals
- you are maintaining a legacy app already built on NEKit

## When to avoid
- starting a new project - the library is deprecated and unmaintained since 2020
- you want a production-ready, out-of-the-box proxy solution
- you need TUN interface support, which is broken
- you want efficient async I/O - the author notes architectural and performance flaws

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: abandoned
- function: proxy, networking, http-client
- domain: networking, privacy, censorship-circumvention, developer-tools
- platform: -
- tags: network-extension, shadowsocks, tun2socks, proxy-framework, deprecated, swift, ios, macos

## Member repositories
- zhuhaow/NEKit (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:23.854321+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:48:43.565164+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/zhuhaow/NEKit (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:23.854321+00:00, sha 5e2811b0105f)
  - homepage: https://zhuhaow.github.io/NEKit (fetched 2026-08-29T09:53:51.185662+00:00, sha 3914e85b7cea)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.