Melon VPNMelon-Link, our proprietary VPN protocol
Melon-Link is our in-house VPN protocol. It wraps every packet in AES-256-GCM authenticated encryption and carries the session over Fast TCP, with route selection and connection resumption tuned for the packet loss and handover behavior of mobile networks.
- AES-256-GCM
- Fast TCP
- 631 servers
- 100+ regions
Why did we build our own protocol?
Most phones spend their day moving between Wi-Fi and cellular, and every handover is a chance to drop a session. Established protocols were designed around stable links. Melon-Link was designed around the opposite assumption: the link will break, and reconnecting must be cheaper than starting over.
The second reason is control. When a network starts filtering a protocol, we can change how sessions are carried without asking users to update the app.
What encryption does Melon-Link use?
AES-256-GCM throughout. It is authenticated, so tampering fails loudly instead of silently corrupting data. Keys are negotiated per session.
What is Fast TCP?
Fast TCP is how we carry a session over TCP rather than raw UDP. UDP is faster when it is allowed, but it is also the first thing many mobile carriers and public networks throttle or block. Carrying the session over TCP with tuned congestion control trades a little peak throughput for a connection that stays up when the network turns hostile.
How does Melon-Link handle network changes?
- Connection resumption — a session survives an interface change instead of restarting the handshake.
- Automatic failover — if a route degrades, the client moves to another one without disconnecting.
- Latency-based selection — servers are ordered by measured round-trip time from your network, not by a static list shipped in the app.
- Keep-alive tuning — heartbeat intervals are adjusted for the address-sharing systems mobile carriers use, so idle sessions are not silently dropped.
Does Melon-Link support relay routing?
Yes. Traffic can be carried through a relay before reaching the exit node. Relaying adds latency, so it is chosen when the direct path is being interfered with rather than by default.
What we deliberately do not publish
Port numbers, node IP ranges, per-node capacity, and the way we disguise traffic so it is not blocked, stay private. Publishing them would produce a precise blocklist for anyone who wants to filter this service. Encryption and logging we document in full; topology and fingerprints we do not.
Questions
What protocol does Melon VPN use?
Melon-Link, our in-house protocol. It encrypts traffic with AES-256-GCM and carries the session over Fast TCP.
Why not just use WireGuard or OpenVPN?
Because both are easy to recognize on a network, which makes them easy to block. Melon-Link lets us change how sessions are carried without shipping a new app.