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Tailscale raises $100M

(tailscale.com)
854 points gmemstr | 2 comments | 04 May 22 13:17 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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boesboes ◴[04 May 22 13:43 UTC] No.31260274[source]▶
For anyone else who wonders wtf tailscale is:

> Tailscale is a VPN service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. It enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the open source WireGuard protocol, which means only devices on your private network can communicate with each other.

It seems to take care of key distribution, nat-traversal, authentication etc etc

Neat! No sure how that is 'fixing internet' exactly, but really cool anyway

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yrro ◴[04 May 22 13:55 UTC] No.31260446[source]▶
Tailscale is one of the ways you can restore the end-to-end connectivity principle that IP introduced and that NAT destroyed.
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legalcorrection ◴[04 May 22 13:59 UTC] No.31260512[source]▶
This is kind of overstated. Even if everyone went IPv6 and gave every device a public IP address, pretty much every network would have a firewall that behaved just like NAT.
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Spivak ◴[04 May 22 14:01 UTC] No.31260541[source]▶
Yeah, no one is going to allow unsolicited inbound connections even without NAT so you still have to have something to hook up the two ends in a P2P setting.
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throw0101a ◴[04 May 22 14:26 UTC] No.31260919[source]▶
> Yeah, no one is going to allow unsolicited inbound connections even without NAT so you still have to have something to hook up the two ends in a P2P setting.

Sure they are. All home routers that I'm aware of allow for port forwarding so folks can self-host a service: perhaps a game server (e.g., Minecraft), web, e-mail, etc.

It's just going forward you can set up a separate subnet to put your gear in (especially if you get multiple /64 subnets from your ISP). You can have a DMZ, and use either the router- and/or host-level firewall to dictate which connections are allowed.

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1. legalcorrection ◴[04 May 22 17:58 UTC] No.31263755{3}[source]▶
The point is for the user to not have to go configure their firewall.
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2. throw0101a ◴[04 May 22 19:41 UTC] No.31264872[source]▶
Which can be done via UPnP and PCP, and without having to maintain TURN/STUN/etc infrastructure. The latter of which can only be done with IPv6, since with IPv4 you're NATing.

So IPv6 makes things easier—which was the point of my post: IPv6 makes things easier.