Introduction of X-Ray

X-Ray is a fork development of V2Ray. Before we begin with X-Ray, we should start from V2Ray first, as most of the code are developed in V2Ray. V2Ray is a set of tools that used for creating privacy network (or proxy). In Mainland, it is widely used for passing through GFW.

The benefit for using V2Ray rather than typical VPN services is, their network package does not have the characteristic of typical VPN networks. As it is using TLS 1.3 for encryption and following normal HTTPS characteristic. The network package will simply looks like any HTTPS encrypted website (i.e. Only domain name, port number and package size will be recorded in GFW, all others will be encrypted). Moreover, V2Ray is light-weight, it can also be installed in home network routers. (I have already installed as server in my router, R7000, manufactured in August 2013) You can visit GitBook page of V2Ray for more detail.

XTLS was first developed in V2Ray by xprx This is first introduced in VLESS protocol, which added fallback coding to avoid active checking from GFW. XTLS also encoded in VLESS to avoid double encryption caused by TLS in V2Ray. Before the existence of VLESS, we usually create a HTTPS website with Candy or NGINX, using redirect function behind NGINX, anything matches V2Ray will be redirected, others will be either error404 or another page. However, this method is too slow. After the development of VLESS, if the traffic don't have VLESS structure or the UUID incorrect, it will fallback to HTTP protocol, we can now develop NGINX behind V2Ray/Xray. However, there was a discussion in V2Ray community, they would like keep using TLS. That's why xprx forked V2Ray and keep developing XTLS. For more detail, you can visit GitBook of X-Ray.