[GH-ISSUE #4856] Netbird attempts to connect to non-routable addresses in attempts to connect to remote peers. #9438

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opened 2026-08-05 01:22:08 -04:00 by saavagebueno · 2 comments
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Originally created by @sahps on GitHub (Nov 25, 2025).
Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/4856

We have a Netbird client on its own dedicated VLAN, it is used as the exit node into the rest of the internal network and is working well.

The firewall logs attempts to connect to private internal ranges (ie. 192.168.0.0/16) out onto the WAN, seemingly as an attempt to direct connect to peers before connecting via public IP. So I have blocked these so that we don't inadvertently send requests onto the ISP for unrouteable ranges.

However, I didn't realise to what extent the requests were. See the hover-report for the Fortigate rule blocking outgoing non-routable connections from the Netbird client:

Image

5 million in 30 days seems excessive.

Request:
Implement a configuration entry to determine what local IP ranges are available from a particular Netbird node, so that it doesn't attempt to make connections to ranges not related to the network it is in.

Originally created by @sahps on GitHub (Nov 25, 2025). Original GitHub issue: https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/issues/4856 We have a Netbird client on its own dedicated VLAN, it is used as the exit node into the rest of the internal network and is working well. The firewall logs attempts to connect to private internal ranges (ie. 192.168.0.0/16) out onto the WAN, seemingly as an attempt to direct connect to peers before connecting via public IP. So I have blocked these so that we don't inadvertently send requests onto the ISP for unrouteable ranges. However, I didn't realise to what extent the requests were. See the hover-report for the Fortigate rule blocking outgoing non-routable connections from the Netbird client: <img width="444" height="426" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e056b738-c823-42f6-aa56-f2cfca2d87b4" /> 5 million in 30 days seems excessive. **Request:** Implement a configuration entry to determine what local IP ranges are available from a particular Netbird node, so that it doesn't attempt to make connections to ranges not related to the network it is in.
saavagebueno added the clientquestion labels 2026-08-05 01:22:08 -04:00
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@nazarewk commented on GitHub (Nov 25, 2025):

The NetBird agent will attempt to connect (and re-connect every few seconds until successfully establishing P2P) on all directly-attached and otherwise discovered IP addresses of the remote Peer it is trying to connect to using ICE.

Seems like a "pretty normal" number of requests if you have a lot of Peers in your network. Could you share more details on this topic? How many Peers do you have? How many of those are possible to P2P to? How many are offline?

<!-- gh-comment-id:3576163010 --> @nazarewk commented on GitHub (Nov 25, 2025): The NetBird agent will attempt to connect (and re-connect every few seconds until successfully establishing P2P) on all directly-attached and otherwise discovered IP addresses of the remote Peer it is trying to connect to using ICE. Seems like a "pretty normal" number of requests if you have a lot of Peers in your network. Could you share more details on this topic? How many Peers do you have? How many of those are possible to P2P to? How many are offline?
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@sahps commented on GitHub (Nov 25, 2025):

This node is expected to have 33 peers connected to it at its peak. All peers are capable of P2P, currently all peers have achieved P2P.

It isn't effecting any systems, I just saw 5-million and 1GB and knee-jerked on the figure. If this is expected to be normal, then I shall continue to block outgoing private ranges on WAN. I'm assuming it connects to these in parallel and not timing out attempting to connect to those ranges.

<!-- gh-comment-id:3576260497 --> @sahps commented on GitHub (Nov 25, 2025): This node is expected to have 33 peers connected to it at its peak. All peers are capable of P2P, currently all peers have achieved P2P. It isn't effecting any systems, I just saw 5-million and 1GB and knee-jerked on the figure. If this is expected to be normal, then I shall continue to block outgoing private ranges on WAN. I'm assuming it connects to these in parallel and not timing out attempting to connect to those ranges.
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Reference: DYNR/netbird#9438