Netbird is the more mature version of this: fully open-source, self-sufficient, works like a charm, supports reverse proxying out-of-the-box, and much more. No reason to ever return to the Tail family.
Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
71–80 of 141 posts
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#72I have a really dumb ignorant question. What is a data plane? What is a control plane? I don’t genuinely understand what these words mean :(
Does this help? This is what I read on the topic a few weeks ago: https://tailscale.com/docs/concepts/control-data-planes
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be amazing to have something like this for bedrock so people with consoles without online subscriptions could join a self hosted bedrock mc server
They can! They just need a real computer, the real Minecraft game (Java), and then they can! it's so easy when you don't play the shitty mobile clone.
Why is this downvoted? Bedrock is literally dog shit clone for iPad kids. This is not even controversial, it's just fact.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#74As 'cattail' is not officially taken, I have to assume they are oblivious to having a little fun.
Keeps with the tradition of netcat alternatives like powercat, socat, cryptcat.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#75I enjoy that they supply a nix install/environment, similar to the main tailscale/tailscale repo. Is nix widespread or the standard dev environment at tailscale, or is it like a 10% option and most people just use Docker or whatever?
Loving this. Honestly I keep encouraging folks to just TRY native Nix for dev environments. So easy to set up and get value on day 1 that you'd be shocked. Also models/LLMs have made lightyear strides in the last few months to help with everything around it. We've been building up Nix based skill systems into our Flox skill and it's been super meaningful both on adoption and when we need to scale it up. (disclaimer I do Flox.dev which is Nix based and we do cool Nix stuff)
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
(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.
It's an official tailscale product no? Fwiw, I don't think vendor lock-in is a bad thing, but being open source doesn't mean there's no vendor-lock in. If a client builds their system on top of an open source technology, then switching away from that dependency would have a cost, even if that cost is engineering man-hours. If tailscale does not work out of the box with netcat, and requires a custom additional depende…
This isn't due to tailscale not supporting or working with netcat; you can nc to an address on your tailnet just fine.
This is using the infrastructure tailscale set up for a different purpose. Rather than requiring a tailnet or even an account anywhere, you can tailcat between any two endpoint. Tailscale is there because it runs the DERP relays which get the client's pubkey to the server, brokers the connection, and coordinates holepunching.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#77One fun use case: a coworker just whipped up this Minecraft mod using tailcat as its transport: https://github.com/tailscale/tailcat-for-minecraft (just a cute demo, not intended for release or ongoing maintenance)
It would be amazing to have something like this for bedrock so people with consoles without online subscriptions could join a self hosted bedrock mc server
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#78One fun use case: a coworker just whipped up this Minecraft mod using tailcat as its transport: https://github.com/tailscale/tailcat-for-minecraft (just a cute demo, not intended for release or ongoing maintenance)
It would be amazing to have something like this for bedrock so people with consoles without online subscriptions could join a self hosted bedrock mc server
[deleted]
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I solved this problem by building/running a custom tailscale client that connects to two tailnets at the same time ( https://github.com/maisem/tailmix )
I was just wondering yesterday if it'd be possible to have a tailscale client, or multiple tailscale clients in their own network namespaces, that could connect to multiple networks. The slightly tricky part would be managing a local NAT that blends the two networks, and also does MagicDNS to answer on those NATed IPs. If routes conflicted, I guess you'd have to pick one? Seems very doable though.
yeah that's kinda what it does. It sets up two tsnet servers connected to two different tailnets and exposes them through a shared TUN device. It does the magic of allocating safe IPs to each host so that they don't overlap and does some leasing so that IPs aren't accidentally reassigned. It also does the MagicDNS thing so that DNS returns the "effective IP".
I wanted it to work on macOS so couldn't rely on network namespaces.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#80I use mosh over WebSockets to have a long lived connection to my home network.
I bet I could simplify out the WebSocket-to-UDP proxy by leaning into tailcat's dataplane and just speak straight UDP.