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> Because of firewall network address translation (NAT) issues, rendezvous protocols generally require that there be at least one unblocked and un-NATed server that lets the peers locate each other and initiate concurrent packets at each other.

So probably cant help with a VPC unless you pierce a hole for it.

I guess this makes sense, since by design this shouldn't be possible.

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The point of the intermediate server is so that you can NAT hole punch, otherwise it has little point (except maybe as a relay, which is a bad solution).

We're making good progress on hole-punching, but it isn't available yet. Once complete, that should take some pressure/cost off the transit relay machine.

Note that the transit relay only sees ciphertext (for bulk data transfers). Even the mailbox server only sees ciphertext or SPAKE key-exchange messages. No server sees plaintext ever.

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't say the relay server is a bad solution because of transfer security (although it could be an issue), but rather because it is expensive in terms of bandwidth and so is unlikely to exist long-term.

Well it allows you to customize the rendezvous server, so if you're on a network with no internet access you can host the server there.

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