Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO
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You really don't though. I use wireguard myself under the same scenario without issue. You just need to use some form of dynamic DNS to mitigate the potentially changing IP. Even if you're using Tailscale you'll still need to have something running a service all the time anyways, so may as well skip the proxy.
If you only need to worry about the IP changing, then your ISP is not using NAT, or CGNAT as it is better known. I'm pretty sure that you can also use port forwarding, which is not commonly available under CGNAT.
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Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component). Thankfully the functions of tailscale are open source so until enshittification actually happens I will be happy with using a a useful but VC funded project. When I am not willing to make the trade off anymore I will use headscale or some other drop in replacement.
Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component).
No, it is not that bleak. It is only inevitable when there is an active push for a short-term maximization of user base monetization (which is very much in the nature of VC). It can usually be avoided with products that are wholly under the ownership of all users (such as a cooperative or a government-provided service) or - only if one is lucky - with products of financially independent private enterprises under vaguely benevolent and unhurried leadership (such as Steam, to some extent)
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If you only need to worry about the IP changing, then your ISP is not using NAT, or CGNAT as it is better known. I'm pretty sure that you can also use port forwarding, which is not commonly available under CGNAT.
Ah, I see where I got confused. Yeah, CGNAT isn't very common around here. I don't think I've ever run into an ISP that uses it. I can see how that complicates things.
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To be fair, anything the GUI clients do can be done with the CLI which is still open source and on all desktop platforms and headscale is literally their open source control server.
Yea, but in iOS?
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Huh, I actually didn't know this because I don't use Windows/macOS/iOS. Somehow completely missed this.
Granted this is not Headscale's fault, they're just using Tailscale clients. Either way I'm glad I use a roll-your-own Wireguard.
I and my partner also don't use those OSs, but it's more the point of using FOSS when we can.
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Crap, I really need to switch of Tailscale but currently it is an easy way for me to access my stuff outside of home as a temporary solution while I am on a 5G modem.
Do you pay for a domain? They likely provide dynamic DNS (DNS). If you're lucky, they have an API for it, instead of an app, and you can configure a cronjob on your home server to run every 1-5 minutes (or more often, if your IP is super unstable!).
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I can recommend to take a look at netbird.io
I can't. I tried it first and installed it on my phone from f-droid. After opening it up, it connected to an already existing network with other people's old machines from years ago on it. I was horrified.
So then I tried to delete my whole account and couldn't due to an error. I sent them an email about it and they took like two weeks to respond.
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I just replaced my entire setup with base wireguard as a challenge, easier than I expected it to be, and not hard to mimic tailscale.
If you just have to talk from many devices to the one server sure, but Tailscale sure makes it easy for many to many. Also if a direct connection is impossible (e.g. firewall of china, CGNAT etc) tailscale puts a relay server in the middle for you.
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Do you pay for a domain? They likely provide dynamic DNS (DNS). If you're lucky, they have an API for it, instead of an app, and you can configure a cronjob on your home server to run every 1-5 minutes (or more often, if your IP is super unstable!).
Yeah I can always do that, but putting stuff behind something like Tailscale is (or atleast feels) more secure than making my IP known to the public. I have a DMZ setup though so it should be fine.
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Big difference in users and devices here. Tailscale might have a 3 user limit, but you can add up to 100 devices for free. So for me for example I have tailscale running in each and every docker container in my NAS. So each and every container can now act as a node on my tailnet. Users isn't a big deal, any one node can activate funnel with a simple command and poof its available to the public. The convenience coupled with simplicity is what makes Tailscale so god damn good.
Can you segregate connections between different nodes on the tailnet, like say node G and H can only talk to each other and no other nodes?
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Yeah I can always do that, but putting stuff behind something like Tailscale is (or atleast feels) more secure than making my IP known to the public. I have a DMZ setup though so it should be fine.
Your "IP address" is already public. That's why an IPv4 address is assigned to you as a "public IP address" and you NAT to a private space. When using IPv6, everything is public.
The key is to secure everything with access restrictions.
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Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component). Thankfully the functions of tailscale are open source so until enshittification actually happens I will be happy with using a a useful but VC funded project. When I am not willing to make the trade off anymore I will use headscale or some other drop in replacement.
Realistically Tailscale seems to currently be running on a model of get all of the self hosters to love running it at home so then they advocate to run it at work where all of the pricey enterprises licenses make the real money.
I've actually seen some real world usecases where if I had more political push, I would've put Tailscale onto the running as a potential solution
Hopefully they have the right people in place to push back at the VC firms about maintaining their current strategy rather than scaring away all of their best advocates before they can truly get off the ground. Having worked at a company owned by a hedgefund, part of the trick is having the right people in place in the company who can block the worst decisions by the capital-hungry owners
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Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth
Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).
“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”
Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.
And here I am, still using OpenVPN in 2025 lol
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Your "IP address" is already public. That's why an IPv4 address is assigned to you as a "public IP address" and you NAT to a private space. When using IPv6, everything is public.
The key is to secure everything with access restrictions.
Well yes I know, but there is a difference between using a domain bound to me as a person and a random string of numbers that changes every 5 minutes
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Not so much ire than awareness and planning so we don't get caught pants down. I've been using them for 5 years, in part because their clients (for my OSes) are open source and there was a path out of their infrastructure. I paid for it and have a pretty elaborate setup which supports services for family and friends. I've been happy so far, but will be decoupling from their infrastructure. No ire for them, just for the system. The system makes people and firms do what they do.
Ok I can understand awareness. This whole time I've been thinking, Plex started in 2008 and 'Plex Hate' followed about two years into it's existence and has perpetuated itself for these 15 +/- years now. So I'm wondering, if during this time, anyone's personal narrator went off in their head with something like:
Hey bro....you know we're gonna have to dismount.
Awww maaan!
Yeah, I know it's your little honey hole but we're going to have to marry it if this keeps up.
Perhaps I misread the tone of the article.
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Yea, but in iOS?
The iOS app is the exception for now but with the CLI and the core libs being open source it’s at least not off the table to make an alternate iOS client I’d say.
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The vps is the wg server and my home server is a client and it uses pihole as the dns server. Once your clients hang around for a minute, their hostnames will populate on pihole and become available just like TS.
You do have to set available ips to wg's subnet so your clients don't all exit node from the server, so you'll be able to use 192.168.0.0 at home still for speed.
As for NPM, run it on the proxy, aim (for example) Jellyfin at 10.243.21.4 on the wg network and bam.
I am a newbie so I am not sure I understand correctly. Tell me if my understanding is good.
Your Pi-Hole act as your DNS, so the VPS use the pi-hole through the tunnel to check for the translation IP, as set through the DNS directive in the wg file. For example, my pi-hole is at 10.0.20.5, so the DNS will be that address.
On the local side, the pi-hole is the DNS for all the services on that subnet and each service automatically populate their host name on pi-hole. I can configure the DNS server in my router/firewall (OPNSense in my case)
So when I ping service.example.com, it goes through the VPS, which queries the pi-hole through the tunnel and translates the address to the local subnet IP if applicable.
So when I have the wg connection active and my pi-hole is the DNS, every web request will go through the pi-hole. If the IP address is inside the range of AllowedIPs, the connection will go through the tunnel to the service, otherwise, the connection will go through outside the wg tunnel.
Does that make sense?
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Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth
Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).
“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”
Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.
Nerds stop recommending corporate crap: challenge: impossible
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Vps can be really inexpensive, I pay $3 a month for mine
Or get something like a rapsberry-pi (second hand or on a sale). I have netbird running on it and I can use it to access my home network and also use it as tunnel my traffic through it.
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Wireguard if you're just using it yourself. Many various ways to manage it, and it's built in to most routers already.
Otherwise Headscale with one of the webUIs would be the closest replacement.
I decided to experiment a bit with Headscale when the wg-easy v15 update broke my chained VPN setup. Got it all set up with Headplane for a UI, worked amazingly, until I learned I was supposed to set it all up on a VPS instead and couldn't actually access it if I wasn't initially on my home network, oops.
I might play around with it again down the road with a cheap VPS, didn't take long to get it going, but realistically my setup's access is 95% me and 5% my wife so Wireguard works fine (reverted back to wg-easy v14 until v15 allows disabling ipv6 though, since that seemed to be what was causing the issues I've been seeing).
