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Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

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Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#91

Post by lloeki »

crawshaw wrote: post #70
tailspin2019 wrote: post #24

> Narrowlink and Tailscale are two open source solutions with different architectures that enable secure remote access and connectivity across networks. A nitpick, but ironically I think they're being generous to Tailscale there. Tailscale isn't really "open source" - or at least not without heavy qualification. I'm not an open source zealot by any means but that line just seems a little misleading. The clients are p…

(Tailscalar) The client is completely open source on open source operating systems. The repository you linked to is 100% of the client for Linux, and there's another repository for Android. As a bonus you can run the open source client on closed source OSs, i.e. macOS, WSL2. We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it.

> The client is completely open source on open source operating systems.

IOW it's by and large the GUI part that is not open source. Personally I prefer to run it as a system LaunchDaemon than a user LaunchAgent anyway.

> We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it.

I seem to recall reading that another reason was that there was intent to open source it but it made little sense as far as running it because its code was written for (and coupled to) Tailscale's heavy duty infra. So Headscale beat Tailscale to it by providing not just code but code that could work on much wider contexts.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#92

Post by hobofan »

Joker_vD wrote: post #88
hobofan wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those products provide that functionality on paper, but they are widely different products with widely different audiences. I think their respective "Get Started" buttons show it best: Tailscale tries to get you connected to your team and to download the client as fast and easy as possible (= it's a product for everyone in the company), while Narrowlink throws you to a lengthy explainer page that no non-techn…

Notice how you actually have compared those two products according to one particularly (arbitrarily?) chosen criterion.

Of course you can compare apples to oranges, but if you know that a huge amount of the population is allergic to citrus fruit, it's just a waste of time to compare their dimensions or prices.

It's not arbitrarily chosen, and I wouldn't call it a criterion. I am arguing that they are different products for so different audiences, that all other criteria don't really matter.

> both of those products aim to provide secure tunnelling/network connectivity

You are talking about technical capabilities, but that still doesn't make them similar products. Figma and Miro are not similar products, just because they both provide an infinite canvas and team collaboration capabilities.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#93

Post by aidos »

uxp8u61q wrote: post #83
crawshaw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tailscalar) The client is completely open source on open source operating systems. The repository you linked to is 100% of the client for Linux, and there's another repository for Android. As a bonus you can run the open source client on closed source OSs, i.e. macOS, WSL2. We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it.

> We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it. Can you elaborate? This sentence makes no sense to me. Headscale is not tailscale, so they didn't "beat you to it", they just released a competiting product.

They’ve been really good about promoting and supporting headscale. I feel like this comment from Bradfitz gives a nice little insight into the reality of open sourcing code.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32470615

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#94

Post by benjaminl »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #16

Definitely interested in this, however: >Narrowlink uses a centralized gateway that clients and agents connect to over HTTP/S protocols Tunneling TCP over TCP will undoubtedly result in poor network performance. This is why WireGuard is UDP-only.

They should move to using QUIC which is the protocol backing HTTP/3. QUIC incorporates TLS1.3 and has an extension for UDP style unreliable datagrams (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9221/). It would be the perfect way to bring SSL/TSL/HTTPS VPNs onto a modern performant protocol while keeping the simplicity in of the https based VPN. It would still have the advantage of looking like https traffic, while have the performance characteristics of UDP based VPN protocol.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#95

Post by p_l »

lloeki wrote: post #91
crawshaw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Tailscalar) The client is completely open source on open source operating systems. The repository you linked to is 100% of the client for Linux, and there's another repository for Android. As a bonus you can run the open source client on closed source OSs, i.e. macOS, WSL2. We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it.

> The client is completely open source on open source operating systems. IOW it's by and large the GUI part that is not open source. Personally I prefer to run it as a system LaunchDaemon than a user LaunchAgent anyway. > We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it. I seem to recall reading that another reason was that there was intent to open source it but it made little sense as fa…

the GUI part is also open source (I went looking recently in hope of adding support for `tailscale switch` on android). It's just in surprisingly weird toolkits :)

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#96

Post by p_l »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #79
crawshaw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and that seems very reasonable? If you're running your own coordination server, stand one up for each tailnet you want to run. Different software has different operating requirements, and headscale is building to requirements that are better suited to someone running their own. E.g. our internal coordination server has a bunch of goop in it for talking to a couple of AWS services we use. No-one wants that.

Personally I just feel better recommending something to people if I know the service is 100% open source. I don’t care if the code includes stuff “no one wants”. I’m a talescale user and I love it, but I do feel a bit weird using and recommending a service with important bits that are proprietary. At the same time, part of why I like the service is that it’s dead simple to use. I imagine headscale takes more effort t…

Having recently put some work to essentially sell headscale-as-a-service (to clients that for various reasons wouldn't want to pay tailscale anyway even if they found the service great), about only issues between tailscale and headscale are that headscale got a bit of cruft regarding internal models that are currently being worked on, and for practical purposes it shows up in a bit harder time handling ACLs and no tailnet-peering support.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#97

Post by SajjadPourali »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #16

Definitely interested in this, however: >Narrowlink uses a centralized gateway that clients and agents connect to over HTTP/S protocols Tunneling TCP over TCP will undoubtedly result in poor network performance. This is why WireGuard is UDP-only.

Hey, I am the creator of Narrowlink. I certainly find your comment valid, and using WireGuard over HTTPS most of the time provides better network performance. However, in very specific cases, Narrowlink demonstrates superior performance.

1- When your devices' routes are not optimal, and utilizing a CDN can enhance the connection due to smart routing. For instance, I have a server in Poland (while I live in Canada) where the direct connection is slower than connecting via Narrowlink behind the CDN (The gateway behind the CDN).

2- And in rare cases, Tailscale cannot establish a peer-to-peer connection, opting to use DERP servers and their own servers (no longer strictly P2P as seen here: https://tailscale.com/kb/1232/derp-servers/). In such cases, Narrowlink may provide faster connectivity.

3- When you start your Tailscale client, it needs to perform NAT discovery. If a symmetric NAT exists, it takes time to connect due to network flooding for UDP hole punching, while Narrowlink can respond on demand (see the section "The benefits of birthdays" on https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works/).

It's also important to note, alongside the protocol, the software implementation is crucial. Narrowlink is written purely in Rust, while Tailscale has been created by orchestrating existing tools and uses the Go and C++ programming languages. I suggest you try Narrowlink and experience its computational performance.

I believe Tailscale is an amazing VPN solution, but its protocol, infrastructure, and complexities might not be the best fit for self-hosted platforms. In contrast, Narrowlink is a Proxy solution (currently not a VPN) that is very simple to set up.

Please note that narrowlink only encapsulate the TCP payload's not its headers.

I recently released Narrowlink (just two days ago), and it is in the early stages of its journey. I have various plans for this project, including a web interface, integration of the QUIC protocol, and more. I just need the support of the community and more time to enhance it.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#98

Post by SajjadPourali »

Joker_vD wrote: post #33
zhaoweny wrote: post #19

Seems Narrowlink is tunneling at socket level; while Tailscale is tunneling at network / IP level. I think they are comparing apple to orange here.

And we all know apples and oranges are incompatible in every single way. Even their physical dimensions or prices can't be meaningfully compared! Seriously though: both of those products aim to provide secure tunnelling/network connectivity. They do it differently, which leads to different trade-offs including, among other things, at which level the OS network stack is intercepted. All of those things can be meaningf…

You can integrated it with sing-box to do. https://narrowlink.com/docs/extended-tutorial/vpn-integratio...

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#99

Post by phibz »

p_l wrote: post #95
lloeki wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The client is completely open source on open source operating systems. IOW it's by and large the GUI part that is not open source. Personally I prefer to run it as a system LaunchDaemon than a user LaunchAgent anyway. > We never open sourced our coordination server because Headscale beat us to it. I seem to recall reading that another reason was that there was intent to open source it but it made little sense as fa…

the GUI part is also open source (I went looking recently in hope of adding support for `tailscale switch` on android). It's just in surprisingly weird toolkits :)

By gui i think the above posts meant the tailscale web UI for auth and account management.

Re: Tailscale vs. Narrowlink

#100

Post by lloeki »

phibz wrote: post #99
p_l wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the GUI part is also open source (I went looking recently in hope of adding support for `tailscale switch` on android). It's just in surprisingly weird toolkits :)

By gui i think the above posts meant the tailscale web UI for auth and account management.

Nope I meant the macOS and iOS UI (possibly more)
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