Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
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Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#2Interesting.
I thought about doing this immediately after reading their old blog[1] post on punching through NAT some time ago.
Just a combo of never getting around to it and friends talking me out of it b/c of existing alternatives such as wormhole[2].
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#3I did the homemade version of this for years just with SSH forwarding and nginx reverse proxy
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#4i like that it removes tailscale proprietary.
if that is goal then why not go 100% open source to eliminate the ts derp control as well and get full sovereignty?
like netbird, openziti, zerotier, etc.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#5>"like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane"
Half of the Software offering nowadays seems to be selling vendor lock-in at no added value and then making a profit.
Sure there's always some negligible added value, and then they reinvent a whole stack for their ecosystem. In the case of tailscale the added value seems to be avoiding going into your router and activating port forwarding? It looks like negative added value to me. Someone that tells you "don't do NAT traversal, just open a port" would be highly valuable, but saying no doesn't seem to be trendy, and is certainly not an easy sell.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#6i like that it removes tailscale proprietary. if that is goal then why not go 100% open source to eliminate the ts derp control as well and get full sovereignty? like netbird, openziti, zerotier, etc.
(Author here)
The DERP server is already open source and tailcat can use any DERP server you run: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/tree/main/cmd/derper#...
We just provide some default ones (https://tailcat.dev/derpmap.json) to get started if you're not bandwidth-sensitive. But you don't have to use them.
Update: I added more explicit docs about this to https://github.com/tailscale/tailcat#bring-your-own-derp-rel...
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#7i like that it removes tailscale proprietary. if that is goal then why not go 100% open source to eliminate the ts derp control as well and get full sovereignty? like netbird, openziti, zerotier, etc.
Or just use wireguard directly. I get it that it's a pain in the ass to configure it, but there are plenty of open source config generators
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#8>"like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane" Half of the Software offering nowadays seems to be selling vendor lock-in at no added value and then making a profit. Sure there's always some negligible added value, and then they reinvent a whole stack for their ecosystem. In the case of tailscale the added value seems to be avoiding going into your router and activating port forwarding? It looks like negative added v…
(Author here)
There's no vendor lock-in here and no payment or account required. If Tailscale as a company fails, tailcat keeps working if you run your own DERP server. It's just open source code, not a hosted service.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#9>"like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane" Half of the Software offering nowadays seems to be selling vendor lock-in at no added value and then making a profit. Sure there's always some negligible added value, and then they reinvent a whole stack for their ecosystem. In the case of tailscale the added value seems to be avoiding going into your router and activating port forwarding? It looks like negative added v…
...this is a github repo. Pointing to an open source project. That is not forced to use any vendor-specific systems to function.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#10I did the homemade version of this for years just with SSH forwarding and nginx reverse proxy
but without nat traversal...