Concepts

zrok was designed to make sharing local resources both secure and easy. In this section of the zrok documentation, we'll tour through all of the most important features.

Sharing with zrok can be either public or private. Naturally, regular web-based resources can be shared but zrok also includes support for sharing raw TCP and UDP network connections, and also includes a website and file sharing feature.

Learn about zrok hosting here, including instructions on how to install your own zrok instance.

Instance and account

You create an account with a zrok instance. Your account is identified by a username and a password, which you use to log into the web console. Your account also has a secret token, which you use to authenticate from the zrok command line to interact with the instance.

You create a new account with NetFoundry's zrok instance by subscribing at myzrok.io, or in a self-hosted zrok instance by running the zrok2 invite command or zrok2 admin create account.

Environment

Using your secret token, you use the zrok command line to create an environment. An environment corresponds to a single command-line user on a specific host system.

You create a new environment with the zrok2 enable command.

Shares

Once you've enabled an environment, you create one or more shares. Every share has a public or private sharing mode and is identified by a share token. You use zrok2 share to create ephemeral shares. See public shares and private shares for details on each mode.

Persistent shares

By default, shares are ephemeral—when you terminate zrok2 share, the share and its token are gone. zrok also supports persistent shares with consistent tokens that survive restarts. See reserved names and namespaces for the full v2.0 workflow.

The agent

The zrok agent centralizes management of your shares and accesses as a single persistent background process. See zrok agent for more info.