Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO

Submitted ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨avidamoeba@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

https://betakit.com/corporate-vpn-startup-tailscale-secures-230-million-cad-series-c-on-back-of-surprising-growth/

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.

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Goretantath@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Didnt even work for me, i use mullvad so if i wanted to use tailscale on my android to connect to my desktop, it wants me to disable mullvad unlike on my desktop…

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- scrooge101@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Tailscale offers a paid Mullvad integration, where you can select most Mullvad servers as exit nodes. Works quite well.
  
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  - lautre@jlai.lu ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes, I’m using it as well. It works very well on android and Linux.
    
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- irmadlad@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Hmmm. I run PIA and Tailscale simultaneously on my devices. I did have to tinker around with the settings in PIA such as the VPN & Advanced Kill Switch. So, now Tailscale is for administrating remote servers, and PIA for everything else. DNS leak checks, etc all check out.
  
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- milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I think that’s because both work on Android by being a VPN, and the system can’t handle doing two vpns simultaneously
  
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  - Archer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well not really but most people don’t like manually editing routing tables
    
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- danielquinn@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah this was a deal-breaker for me too.
  
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deur@feddit.nl ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’ve realized how easy it is to just actually run a network rather than half ass it with tailscale. I recommend this, it’s fun.

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- beirdobaggins@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Tell me more.
  
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Franconian_Nomad@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Was listening to some computer podcast a while ago and the co-host and ex- hacker was saying that more and more VPNs are getting targeted and it’s just a matter of time we see quite a bit of them owned. (I think he was talking about implementation of VPNs for remote workers, rather than actual VPN providers. Sorry, it was some time ago)

Anyway, the host asked „What about wireguard?“

And the co-host: „Oh yeah, wireguard is solid! But all the services building up on wireguard? … They’ll get popped.“

Doesn’t have to be true, but something to keep in mind.

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anachrohack@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What is even the point of tailscale? What can it do that other VPN solutions don’t? I feel like this is a problem that was solved like 20 years ago and still we’re coming up with novel solutions for some reason. At my company they want to start using tailscale and I don’t see why we don’t just set up wireguard on a node in our k8s cluster instead

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- lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Because I can have 3 phones, 2 tablets, 3 computers and 4 server on the same Tailnet in 15 minutes when starting from scratch
  
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  - anachrohack@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I guess that’s neat but I don’t think I’ve ever needed more than one connection to a corpo VPN at a time
    
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- NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If you are capable of setting up your own personal VPN, you don’t need Tailscale. You still may want to use it though, depending on how much of a novelty Network Fun is for you in your spare time.
  
  For me, the main advantage to Tailscale et al is that it is on a per device basis. So I can access my SMB shares or Frigate setup remotely while still keeping the rest of my internal network isolated( to the degree I trust the software and network setup). You CAN accomplish that with some fancy firewall rules and vlanning but… yeah.
  
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ChickenAndRice@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If I host headscale on a VPS, is that as seamless of an experience as Tailscale? And would I miss out on features, like the Tailscale dashboard? How does the experience change for me (an admin type) and my users (non-technical types)?

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- MangoPenguin@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There are some community webUIs for Headscale: https://headscale.net/stable/ref/integration/web-ui/
  
  I'm not sure otherwise how different the experience would be.
  
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  - couch1potato@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I actually did this instead of tailscale first; installing tailscale on a pfsense router was a challenge, iirc i had to find and install the freebsd tailscale pkg from the command line because the plugin doesn’t give the option to connect to a non-tailscale control plane.
    
    After I did that and connected to my headscale server, I could ping pfsense’s local ip, but couldn’t get any traffic out. Turns out I had forgotten the pfsense tailscale plugin automatically sets up outbound rules for you.
    
    That was a rabbit hole I didn’t feeling like falling down, so I turned off headscale and just used tailscale. But it’s there and it does work fine if I ever wanted to go figure out the outbound traffic rules.
    
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Wahots@pawb.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Are there better alternatives? I was planning on using tailscale until now. :P

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- lone_faerie@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Depends on your use case. If you’re just looking to expose services and are ok having them publicly accessible, there’s Cloudflare Tunnel, or you can run WireGuard on a cheap VPS
  
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- milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I use Nebula. It’s lightweight, well-engineered and fully under your control. But you do need a computer with a fixed IP and accessible port. (E.g. a cheap VPS)
  
  You can also use “managed nebula” if you want to enjoy the same risk of the control point of your network depending on a new business ;-)
  
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- exu@feditown.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  A bunch really, Headscale with Tailscale client, Nebula VPN, Netmaker, Zerotier.
  
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- 4k93n2@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  ive been eyeing up netbird but havnt got around to trying it yet. its fully open source at least, and theyre based in germany is anyone cares about that
  
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  - hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    i used netbird heavily at my last job and i use it for a few things at home. it works pretty well.
    
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  - avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Just looked at NetBird, it looks suspiciously similar to Tailscale in what it does except they also got an open-source control server. They have self-hosting doc right in their web site. Looks interesting. Can’t find much about the company other than it’s based in Berlin and it’s currently private - Wiretrustee UG.
    
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- MangoPenguin@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Wireguard.
  
  Many various ways to manage it, and it's built in to most routers already.
  
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  - nfreak@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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).
    
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  - Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Pivpn is really easy, and since pivpn is just scripts, it always installs current wireguard even if they lax on updating pivpn that often.
    
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- candyman337@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I use the built in wireguard VPN in my router. If you just need local network access elsewhere it’s usually really easy to setup if your router provides it. I would look into it!
  
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- avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  For me personally, the next step is using Headscale - a FOSS replacement of the Tailscale control server. The Tailscale clients are already open source and can be used with Headscale.
  
  Someone else could give other suggestions.
  
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  - JoMiran@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve been meaning to switch from Tailscale to Headscale but I have been to busy. Do you have any instructions, write-ups/walk-thrus you could recommend to set this up? I have three sites with 1GB internet I can use. One has a whole house UPS but dynamic IP, another has a static IP but no UPS, and the third is Google fiber with no UPS, but I can use the app to get the current IP anytime. I also own a number of domain names I could use.
    
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30p87@feddit.org ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What’s the benefit over just WG?

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- kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  WG is worthless in a CGNAT environment… And as we are in 2025 and time doesn’t stop it will be irrelevant for everyone someday, unless they fully support IPv6 (which I don’t know if they do, if you can use WG in a CGNATED network with IPv6 I’d like to know though, I am very rusty setting it up, but it might worth checking it out).
  
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  - melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    CGNAT is for IPv4, the IPv6 network is separate. But if you have IPv6 connectivity on both ends setting up WG is the same as with IPv4.
    
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- RxBrad@infosec.pub ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Personally, my IP (T-Mobile 5G) has CGNAT and blocks all incoming traffic. I can’t simply Wireguard into my network. Tailscale has been my intermediary to get remote access.
  
  I guess it’s time to figure how how to host an alternative on a VPS (I see Headscale mentioned in these comments).
  
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  - lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Tailscale uses WG though, so it’s fundamentally the same thing. Like you said - just do Headscale on a VPS.
    
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- lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Your tech illiterate grandma can set it up. It’s that easy.
  
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- fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  No need to port forward, almost 0 config.
  
  tailscale.com/blog/how-tailscale-works
  
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- Starfighter@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You dont need to manually handle the WG config files. This isn’t really an issue when it’s just and your two devices, but once you start supporting more people like non-technical family members, this gets really annoying really quickly.
  
  Tailscale (and headscale) just require you to log in which even those family members can manage and do the rest for you. They also support SSO in which case you wouldn’t even have to create new accounts.
  
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- avidamoeba@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Easier/zero configuration compared to manual WG setup. Takes care of ports and providing transparent relay when no direct connection works.
  
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supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
pre-emptive pikachu strike

Image

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HelloRoot@lemy.lol ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed

Switch to self-hosting headscale when they enshittify in an attempt to become profitable, duh

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- muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I can’t unfortunately. They only feature I use is that fact I can access my ipv6 only server via an ipv4 only network.
  
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- Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Bookmarking “headscale”!
  
  I only recently started using Tailscale because it makes connecting to my local network through a Windows VM running in Boxes on Linux a hell of a lot easier than figuring out how to set up a networked bridge.
  
  This sounds like a great alternative, and it looks like it can even work on a Synology NAS.
  
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- kratoz29@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mainly use Tailscale (and Zerotier) to access my CGNATED LAN, headscale will require me to pay a subscription for a VPS wouldn’t it?
  
  I really envy the guys who say only use them because they’re lazy to open ports or want a more secure approach, I use them because I NEED them lol.
  
  If (when?) Tailscale enshitify I’ll stick with ZT a bit until it goes the same way lol, I started using it 1st, I don’t know if ZT came before Tailscale though.
  
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  - gungho4bungholes@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Vps can be really inexpensive, I pay $3 a month for mine
    
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  - not_amm@lemmy.ml ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Same. I mean, I was already looking to rent a VPS, but at least there’s some time so I can save money until things get weird.
    
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- three@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Been meaning to do this. Tailscale was just there and easy to implement when I set my stuff up. Is it relatively simple to transition?
  
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