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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by picklestehbutt@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

tailscale.com

I have been using Tailscale VPN with my servers for about 6 months now and I would recommend it to anyone.

I'm running it on both of my Proxmox machines, my laptop, a raspberry pi, and my Android phone. It makes it super easy and secure to access my local services while away from my house.

Very simple set up, minimal initial configuration, and versatile.

There are apps for Linux, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

Is anyone else currently using Tailscale? I'd like to hear what you all think.

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[-] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 16 points 1 year ago

One common criticism about Tailscale is it has too many features for a networking product, which increase the likelihood of bugs that can lead to security compromise (e.g. Tailscale SSH ), especially when compromised tailscale network means the malicious actors have full access to your internal network.

[-] lemming007@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

It's not self-hosted, I refuse to use anything that relies on any third party

[-] lckdscl@whiskers.bim.boats 23 points 1 year ago

Check out Headscale, pretty stable on my end

[-] maiskanzler@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Does using headscale reduce the available functionality in any way? I read Tailscale's AMAZING article on NAT traversal and was wondering if that was impacted by moving to headscale in any way. Does headscale replace DERP too?

[-] stefan@lemmy.zwanenburg.info 5 points 1 year ago

Does heads ale replace DERP too?

Headscale does have a built-in DERP server, and you can run standalone instances using code from tailscale (there are a bunch of docker images you can find on docker hub, or you can build one yourself), which you then have to include in Headscale's config. I've done this for a while, but I was running into connectivity issues when on the go using a mobile connection, so I've been falling back on Tailscale's instances for now. I should try again sometime.

[-] maiskanzler@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Could it be that your headscale instance is only available over IPv6? Sometimes that's disabled on mobile networks.

[-] lckdscl@whiskers.bim.boats 2 points 1 year ago

I don't know the technicals that well, but I can see relays working if I run tailscale status. You don't get some enterprise/business features like access control, but I can be wrong.

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[-] hoodlem@hoodlem.me 8 points 1 year ago

What is the benefit of this over just running Wireguard?

[-] jmshrv@feddit.uk 11 points 1 year ago

It's a mesh network unlike plain Wireguard, and it's much easier to set up (with the caveat that there's a third party involved to coordinate connections and stuff)

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[-] mfat 7 points 1 year ago

Elegant, easy to use web based admin panel. Google authentication. Exit nodes (routing all traffic through a peer). Subnet routes. Funnels. It's the best tech I've used lately.

[-] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 5 points 1 year ago

The main benefit is it can punch thorough double NATs. Can't use wireguard if you can't even see your wireguard server when you have a shitty ISP that put their customers behind CGNAT.

[-] porksandwich9113@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Not trying to defend CGNAT because I hate it, but as someone who works for what most of you would consider a "good ISP", we use it simply because don't have enough IP addresses to do 1:1 NAT for every connection, and buying the amount of IP addresses required to do so would literally cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of ~4 million dollars - on top of the headache that we don't know the history of these IP addresses which could cause issues if they are on blacklists, etc.

[-] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I understand if it's due to inability to procure more ipv4 blocks as long as the ISP also supports ipv6 properly. Many of those shitty ISPs do not even have that option though.

[-] porksandwich9113@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, we have a full IPv6 deployment on our entire network and have for a many years now. We're a small rural regional coop so we make an effort to do right by our members the best we can. And for the members who really need a rout-able IPv4 IP, we do have limited blocks we can assign to interfaces if they request it.

[-] redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 4 points 1 year ago

Then it's not a shitty ISP. My precious ISP not only put that customer behind CGNAT, the CGNAT's IP addresses they use have poor reputation too so their customers sometimes get caught in captcha hell (very annoying when cloudflare doesn't like you because every other sites are behind cloudflare now), doesn't provide static IP address even when I asked to pay for it, and don't even provides IPv6. The only saving grace was 1:1 download/upload ratio, and they implemented government-mandated block list half-assedly (Reddit is banned in my country) so it's easy to circumvent. Once another ISP covered my area, I immediately jumped ship.

The new ISP also has problem with IPv4 allocation. Sometimes I got assigned behind a CGNAT, but restarting the modern is usually enough to get assigned into a publicly routable IPv4. And they actually have IPv6 so the CGNAT isn't as much of an issue. The drawback is asymmetric download/upload speed, and they implemented the government-mandated block list more competently (transparently hijacking all DNS requests, throttling DoH, ip-blocking some blocked websites, sniffing http host header and block it if the website is banned, etc) so I have a bit harder time to unblock everything.

[-] porksandwich9113@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Wow, that sounds like pretty awful internet conditions. What country do you live in if you don't mind me asking?

[-] mfat 6 points 1 year ago

It's not self-hosted but it's incredibly useful for self-hosting as it makes public access to locally hosted services a breeze. It's user-friendly, feature-rich and scalable.

[-] death916@lemmy.death916.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

U can use headscale and make it pretty much 100% self hosted

[-] mfat 1 points 1 year ago

I hope it becomes easier to deploy for less techie users.

[-] green_dot@le.fduck.net 5 points 1 year ago

I tried it, its great if you want to get started. or you want to run a vpn on a server that doesnt support wireguard. My main gripe with the client is that it can't do high speeds, it's just too cpu bound. Like going close to a gigabit transfer.

With wireguard I was able to get to 98% gigabit transfer. It was fine for a month I was using it, in the end I just setup a wireguard mesh with Netmaker.

There is headscale where you can run your own hosted central server, so you're not using the tailscale one.

In the end netmaker did what I wanted, however they tend to introduce bit of changes in their releases, so if you're not super technical it might pose a challenege with upgrading until they reach a super stable version. Like jump from 0.10.X to 0.20 had some big changes for the whole netmaker internals. Bit that does not impact wireguard connectivity.

[-] benjacoblee@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I like it, but it consumes copious amounts of battery on my Android phone. I only use it for 1) ssh and 2) services that I don't want / need to be accessible over the Internet (admin tools)

[-] EchoVerse@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I have the same issue with 1.1.1.1 and cloudflare tunnels. It really kills my battery

[-] dartanjinn@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I run pivpn with wireguard alongside tailscale for this exact reason. Wireguard in the phone, tailscale on PCs.

[-] einsteinx2@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

If you already have to setup and maintain WireGuard, what’s the added benefit of Tailscale for your use case?

[-] dartanjinn@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

In all honesty I ran both because I hadn't yet discovered route advertisement on tailscale. Now that I've discovered that feature, I really only use wireguard for the phone due to battery drain with tailscale. Also, I can't use wireguard on my work PC because the firewall drops all VPN traffic and tailscale gets around that. I'm not gonna pretend to know how it gets around that cause I haven't bothered to learn it that deeply yet but it works and I like it.

I guess the TL;DR is tailscale bypasses firewall restrictions and wireguard doesn't drain my phone battery.

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[-] slip@818.gallery 1 points 1 year ago

you use tailscale for ssh instead of termux?

[-] benjacoblee@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I didn't know what Termux was before this

But if it's ssh on Android, I use Termius (which I haven't used all that much tbh)

[-] picklestehbutt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

It does. I only turn it on when I need it.

[-] julesiecoolsie@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

This looks like a paid business vpn.. are you even hosting it? I don't get it

[-] andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 14 points 1 year ago

If you want to self host, you can run the API server yourself with headscale.

[-] picklestehbutt@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I didn't actually know this. Now I won't get anything done on my honey-do list this weekend...

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[-] bookworm@feddit.nl 7 points 1 year ago

The free license is so generous that a home user really should have no reason to ever pay for it.

are you even hosting it

No but as andrew mentions below you CAN self host it.

[-] picklestehbutt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It's free for personal use, although they offer paid versions for enterprise. It's built using Wireguard, so there is a coordination server that's accessed using the web app, but all the traffic is encrypted from client to client.

[-] aedyr@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

That's awesome to hear. I'm looking to set up some self-hosted stuff, and I see a lot of recommendations for Tailscale for the VPN element.

[-] daph@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I'm sat behind a CGNAT for my home internet, so I can't really forward ports in. Tailscale has been great as a free thing to let me get a quick-and-easy VPN set up so I can remote into my network reliably.

[-] lom@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Isn’t tailscale just a company abstracting over a more barebones VPN? I haven’t looked into it, but want to operate a VPN into my home network in the future.

Why would I choose tailscale over just selfhosting wireguard?

[-] snailtrail@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I run a single headscale node on one of my free Oracle OCI instances, and connect about a dozen devices to it. No fear of adding friends either, since it's free.

[-] TheLazurus@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I was using this for a bit actually, only reason I stopped was the network filters at work broke it...but I might try headscale down the road to see what that does....

[-] Dark_Arc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I prefer ZeroTier, I'm not sure why Tailscale has taken off so much in recent years (perhaps just the cleaner UI and better marketing).

[-] slip@818.gallery 1 points 1 year ago

I was using tailscale to transport files between devices quickly but I got an email about a vulnerability that leaked some info. I don't even use it for the vpn part so I just made a protal on a vps that I use now for file transfer. Tailscale was pretty fast at that though, and they were open about the exploit, so I think they're pretty cool.

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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
101 points (95.5% liked)

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