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Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

tailscale.com

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Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#91

Post by uneekname »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #75

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

I've been relatively happy with Headscale, but now that I have MacOS/iOS users I'm in the process of testing alternatives like Netbird. I was also surprised that the Tailscale Kubernetes operator is not compatible with Headscale.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#92

Post by roughly »

eleventyseven wrote: post #45
riknos314 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tl;Dr here is that the cost to them of operating the free tier is lower than what they estimate their Customer Acquisition Cost would be without a free tier, so the free tier generates better leads/conversions to their paid products at a lower cost than traditional sales and marketing. As long as these economics continue to hold they'd be stupid to discontinue the free tier.

But it isn't 'economics' as there is no actual data or science here, just a wild guess about what customer acquisition might currently cost. All it takes to rug pull is some exec speculating that 'the economics' have changed.

> But it isn't 'economics' as there is no actual data or science here, just a wild guess

Welcome to economics.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#93

Post by toomuchtodo »

tda wrote: post #90
aborsy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several ports open (you dont open them, Tailscale does), including for peer relay. Some are vpn ports, but the ports for relay servers are not for VPN so my guess is that the software that listens to those ports is a lot less secure (compared to Wireguard or OpenVPN).

Yes my router has open ports, but it does not do any port forwarding. So I can 'directly' connect any device behind my router without my router needing to know any specifics of which device that is. And I don't need to do any port forwarding of anything on my network and thus expose them to the whole internet; I just expose them to the users of my tailscale network (only me)

Does your router not support UPNP for dynamic port punching?

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#94

Post by dblohm7 »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #75

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

(Tailscalar here) To be clear: it's only the GUIs that are closed source on selected platforms.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#95

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #75

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

"Support free alternatives if you can, even if they underperform by some measure."

I value _control_ more than I do performance

Better performance is, IMHO, not a reason to sacrifice _control_, but that's just me

If users have control, i.e., can compile from source, then in theory performance improvement is possible through DIY or work of others. However performance is not always the only important issue. Today's commercial software tends to be rushed, lower quality, bloated. Releasing work-in-progress software that requires constant remotely-installed "updates" in place of a thoroughly-tested final product is a norm

Without control, if performance, _or anything else about the software_, is unsatisfactory, then there is nothing users can do

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#96

Post by zarzavat »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #75

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

Seems like an odd thing to be concerned about. Most of the apps on my Mac are closed source, that little Tailscale menu bar item is really insignificant. You can always control it through the command line if you're really bothered by it. I'm pretty sure tailscale is on brew.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#97

Post by bityard »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #93
tda wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes my router has open ports, but it does not do any port forwarding. So I can 'directly' connect any device behind my router without my router needing to know any specifics of which device that is. And I don't need to do any port forwarding of anything on my network and thus expose them to the whole internet; I just expose them to the users of my tailscale network (only me)

Does your router not support UPNP for dynamic port punching?

UPnP allows literally any random piece of software inside your network to open and forward arbitrary ports on your firewall. Bad idea!

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#98

Post by toomuchtodo »

bityard wrote: post #97
toomuchtodo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your router not support UPNP for dynamic port punching?

UPnP allows literally any random piece of software inside your network to open and forward arbitrary ports on your firewall. Bad idea!

Within my risk appetite on trusted network segments. I have bigger issues if malware is operational within the trust boundary, it can do what it needs using outbound connections just fine (recon, lateral movement, etc). Your risk appetite might differ.

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#99

Post by tshaddox »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #75

If you're sold on Tailscale due to them "being open" (as they semi-officially support the development of Headscale), keep in mind, that at the same time some of their clients are closed source and proprietary, and thus totally controlled by them and the official distribution channels, like Apple. Some of the arguments given for this stance are just ridiculous: > If users are comfortable running non-open operating sys…

That justification honestly doesn't sound that ridiculous to me, especially if the closed-source stuff is mostly just platform-specific GUI and integration code. Is there even a practical mechanism to open source an iOS app and then letting users verify that the version they're downloading from the App Store is exactly the same version that is open sourced?

Re: Tailscale Peer Relays is now generally available

#100

Post by bityard »

gz5 wrote: post #11
behnamoh wrote: post #3

How does Tailscale make money? I really like their service but I'm worried about a rug pull in the future. Has anyone tried alternative FOSS solutions? Also, sometimes it seems like I get rate limited on Tailscale. Has anyone had that experience? This usually happens with multiple SSH connections at the same time.

OpenZiti (Apache 2.0): https://github.com/openziti/ziti

This is a secure mesh network, but it appears to be for embedding into applications, not a "private VPN" like Tailscale, or do I misunderstand?
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