Ask HN: Critique my startup: ZeroTier One • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Critique my startup: ZeroTier One

#11

Post by abhinavgujjar » Fri, Aug 22, 2014, 7:08 AM UTC

api wrote: post #6

tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once actually needed to emulate a LAN to do a migration of an ISP POP from one place to another (the terminal servers lived on a LAN with hardcoded dependencies on RADIUS servers, DNS, &c). I did it with a proxy ARP daemon I wrote for the task. Nothing comes immediately to my mind for why I'd want that same capability in 2014. Which is not to say there isn't an important use case. Rather: even people who have done…

One thing I'm getting from this particular thread is that I need to focus more on use cases and concretes and less on technology, at least in my initial splash page. For some reason these two responses kind of crystalized that for me... I went to the site and viewed it with new eyes and thought "this would only be appealing to a very narrow, technically focused sort of user." Here's what some current users are doing:…

Yep- exactly. NOW I think this might be a simple way for me to access my devices at home securely.

Re: Ask HN: Critique my startup: ZeroTier One

#12

Post by api » Mon, Aug 25, 2014, 10:21 PM UTC

abhinavgujjar wrote: post #11

api wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I'm getting from this particular thread is that I need to focus more on use cases and concretes and less on technology, at least in my initial splash page. For some reason these two responses kind of crystalized that for me... I went to the site and viewed it with new eyes and thought "this would only be appealing to a very narrow, technically focused sort of user." Here's what some current users are doing:…

Yep- exactly. NOW I think this might be a simple way for me to access my devices at home securely.

Updated the web site to be more use case focused:

https://www.zerotier.com/

Re: Ask HN: Critique my startup: ZeroTier One

#13

Post by paulfurley » Mon, Sep 08, 2014, 7:15 PM UTC

api wrote: post #12

abhinavgujjar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep- exactly. NOW I think this might be a simple way for me to access my devices at home securely.

Updated the web site to be more use case focused: https://www.zerotier.com/

I find it really useful as a (nearly) zero-config way of accessing devices behind a NAT box.

Even my work internet connection is behind a carrier-grade-NAT box so I can't even port forward. I use it to access our Jenkins server which is physically located inside the building.

It's particularly useful for 2 reasons:

- each machine gets a very stable IP (unlike DHCP-assigned addresses) which simplifies hosts files / dnsmasq etc - it's better than port forwarding as every device can work on port 80

So my use case would be something like "simple LAN setup with no more port forwarding"