How much Tailscale is this still if the transport is based on wireguard, the control plane is something new with the keys based on the wireguard keys? Genuinely confused.
Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
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Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#62I 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 :(
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
IPSec may be a pain... but WireGuard is as simple as it gets in my opinion. Yeah, you may need to know basic IP concepts, like MTU... NAT traversal is a different topic, WG won't help in that, and that can actually be a pain. I guess we should be using IPv6 already, and this tool would be largely redundant already. (not completely, encrypted access to isolated networks is a valid use case)
Even without NAT, the same hole punching techniques must be used for IPv6 since there is usually a firewall blocking inbound traffic. Only in CGNAT type scenarios where the network behind NAT is still "WAN" will be helped by IPv6.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#64Just yesterday I was complaining that I wanted to SSH back to my homenet while at the office, on my office (not home) tailnet. I wrote something based on Iroh to do this, but it's one shot (ie not particularly generalized). Might be able to throw it away or redesign it with some inspiration from this! Thanks.
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.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#65Earlier 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.
@bradfitz: Steal this idea ^^^ ;-)
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#66How much Tailscale is this still if the transport is based on wireguard, the control plane is something new with the keys based on the wireguard keys? Genuinely confused.
I dug into it a bit because I had the same question. The network layer here is wrapping around the Tailscale daemon's magicsock, which is the thing that does all the DERPing and NAT hole punching. Tailcat builds sort of a fake control plane that does a one way key exchange over DERP (the Meow message type) between client and server, then both sides do the normal CallMeMaybe dance to connect.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#67One 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
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.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#68A bit off topic: it’s just insane how I used to watch this guy’s http2 in Go yt video 10 years ago, and he’s still very relevant to this day! Cheers Brad!
Also created memcached, livejournal... Brad has a long list of impressive work.
Oh, wow. I had no idea. I've gotten a ton of use out of memcached over the years. Thanks for all your efforts, Brad!
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#69Netbird 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.
Re: Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane
#70I 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?
It's not our standard dev environment but some of us use Nix. We don't really use Docker much, though. Mostly just "go test" etc.
How do you guys deal with nix & go cache? i hate when nix cold starts builds, tests without go cache.