Agents overview
The NetFoundry Frontdoor agent is a lightweight software component you install on your infrastructure to act as a secure bridge to the NetFoundry network.
Its purpose is to enable secure connectivity and expose your backend services to the public without requiring any inbound firewall ports or complex network configuration. The agent automatically creates a secure environment and uses zero-trust principles to tunnel traffic for your shares, allowing you to share applications securely and efficiently.
It runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and in containers, requiring only an outbound internet connection.
Agent management
Installation
Begin by downloading and installing the appropriate agent binary for your platform or using a docker image. Configure the system service or process management according to your infrastructure needs, choosing between running the agent as a system service, daemon, or manual process management. Prepare the bootstrap token for initial enrollment before starting the agent.
Operation
The agent runs continuously as a system service or daemon, maintaining secure connections automatically while handling share creation and traffic routing transparently without manual intervention.
Removal
Agents can be deleted to completely remove access to NetFoundry infrastructure. This deletion process removes all associated Environments and shares, ensuring clean removal with no orphaned resources remaining in the system.
Integration with other components
Relationship with environments
Agents serve as the foundation for Environments, with the installation and bootstrapping process automatically creating an environment for each agent. Each agent maintains exactly one environment, which represents the secure runtime context that the agent provides for service operations.
Connection to shares
Agents enable share functionality by routing traffic through secure tunnels to backend services while handling all the necessary secure tunneling operations. Share performance directly depends on agent connectivity quality, and a single agent can efficiently support multiple shares operating simultaneously.
Frontend integration
Agents work with frontends through shares to create a complete connectivity path from the public internet to private services. Frontends receive public traffic and route it to shares, while agents receive the share traffic and deliver it securely to the designated backend services.