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Tailscale is pretty useful

blog.6nok.org

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Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#291

Post by briHass »

freetime2 wrote: post #249

I'm thinking about exposing some services outside of my LAN, and wondering whether it would be better to go with Tailscale or Cloudflare Tunnel. [1]. At a high-level both solutions seems pretty similar, with a client service running on the machine you want to share. My sense is that tailscale makes sense for a more locked-down service that is not accessible to the general public (although they do have a way to open u…

Good luck with CF's Tunnel. It may have been the complexity of my network at work, but I wasted a day trying to get that to work. Endless web setup 'wizards' and clicking around different components and their settings in the CF portal. It felt like trying to build out a moderately complicated cloud infra environment.

Tailscale is dead simple, even to create 'routers' that act more like a VPN appliance inside your network. It really does feel like something Apple would've come out with in their hayday: missing advanced features for power users, but is somehow able to deliver what feels like magic with minimal setup.

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#292

Post by frontsideair »

tills13 wrote: post #271
miyuru wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I am also getting this unusual error on blog.6nok.org. "This Deployment is paused by the owner. Your connection is working correctly. Vercel is working correctly."

Maybe a cost based trigger on the vercel project?

Exactly, I had a spend limit since I didn’t want to break the bank. It’s back up now.

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#293

Post by frontsideair »

o1o1o1 wrote: post #279
tills13 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a cost based trigger on the vercel project?

I'd be very interested, is there someone who could elaborate please? I'm terrified using a service like Vercel because I heard about the massive cost trap that can hit you hard and I don't know if there is any alternative for (easily & quickly) hosting NextJS apps.

That’s exactly why I put the spend limit, and this was the first time to confirm that it actually works.

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#294

Post by tjoff »

stego-tech wrote: post #101
tjoff wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why go with tailscale in the first place? There is slacks nebula and other options that are completely self-hosted from the start. Feels like such a weird hype around tailscale.

I feel like a lot of hype around Tailscale is because it vastly simplifies VPNs and their associated networking, especially for businesses, startups, or homelabs where the focus might be elsewhere or specific talent is unavailable. The problem arises when folks don't quite understand why specific decisions are being made, or use the product in nonstandard (or even negative) ways. I've seen stories of folks deploying…

But you demonstrately did not make it easy or simple.

Of course there are tons of alternatives even if you are behind CGNAT. Nebula is but one.

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#295

Post by treve »

pierluc-works wrote: post #141

Does anyone have some insight why installing security/tailscale on freebsd is installing security/ca_root_nss which contains a very scary message? https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports/blob/ec981e26cd3128...

The error message is somewhat self explanatory. Tailscale installs new root certs. Freebsd does not endorse them. You're giving complete trust to tailscale.

In case that wasn't helpful, maybe you have a more specific question

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#296

Post by 9dev »

rudasn wrote: post #180
9dev wrote: post #106

We’re using Tailscale for our internal network, and it’s amazing. We’re a team distributed across multiple countries, and with Tailscale, it’s like we’re sitting in a single office, connected to the same router. And on top of that, we get centrally managed ACLs for everyone, TLS certificates, and SSO with Microsoft accounts. Amazing stuff! My main gripe, though, is DNS. It’s great to be able to reach prod-db-1, prod-…

I don't get it. `db` should resolve to all host ips? Wouldnt a load balancer make more sense in that scenario?

Consider `db` resolves to multiple A records:

  db.   IN   A    100.64.123.1   # prod-db-1.
  db.   IN   A    100.64.123.2   # prod-db-2.
  db.   IN   A    100.64.123.3   # prod-db-3.
This is good for service discovery—e.g., you can configure something like RabbitMQ to discover cluster members from an A record—and it's nice for browsers, which will pick one host at random when connecting, which effectively is load balancing.

In a usual setup, the problem is that if a host goes down, clients will still try to reach it because it's still in the DNS record; but with Tailscale, the "DNS" is generated by the local Tailscale daemon on the fly, so you get a live view, and if this was implemented, it would be possible to only return available servers for tag queries.

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#298

Post by mr_mitm »

parasubvert wrote: post #179
hattmall wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do mainstream consumers really need a VPN?

Tailscale isn’t really a VPN, it’s an OSI layer 5 for the TCP/IP world. It makes connectivity as easy as 90s LAN parties were. I use Tailscale - so I can do remote tech support on my 81 year old mother’s computer - So I can remote in to my desktop from anywhere with my mobile phone or iPad or Vision Pro or Steam Deck if I need a file or need to print something - watching streaming media from my home network when I’m…

I get all that, but why do you say it's not a VPN and then go on describe it as a VPN at length? Of course it's a VPN.

Is it because lot of people are just using a VPN as a proxy replacement, watering down the original meaning of the word?

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#299

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

radlad wrote: post #91
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shameless plug, but some of the Nebula team (including myself) works on https://www.defined.net/ (proprietary managed Nebula networks.) My one objection to Nebula is that its Android app is proprietary, and your response is to plug the even more proprietary way to run it? > Also, ZeroTier is "open-source ish." So it's not FOSS.

Sorry, I wasn't aware you had objections to proprietary products! After all, this was a thread about Tailscale and alternatives. :) Many people find it painful to setup a VPN network and prefer a managed solution (e.g. Tailscale instead of Wireguard.) Likewise, people have different understandings of what exactly FOSS means and I'm not deeply familiar with the BSL, so I'm not sure whether it would meet your needs. Be…

> Likewise, people have different understandings of what exactly FOSS means and I'm not deeply familiar with the BSL, so I'm not sure whether it would meet your needs.

https://mariadb.com/bsl11/

> The Business Source License (this document, or the “License”) is not an Open Source license.

I'm gonna take them at their word.

> Best of luck in your search! Maybe take a look at Tinc or Yggdrasil.

I did, but thanks:)

Re: Tailscale is pretty useful

#300

Post by frontsideair »

ash wrote: post #94
yamrzou wrote: post #50

Is there an alternative to Tailscale with a lower memory footprint? I wanted to run Tailscale on a small router, but it failed due to out-of-memory (OOM) issues.

Have you tried "Smaller binaries" instruction? https://tailscale.com/kb/1207/small-tailscale

Thanks, this could’ve worked for my Raspberry Pi! I would’ve tried it if it was still in commission. Next time?
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