←back to thread

Tailscale has raised $160M

(tailscale.com)
655 points louis-paul | 2 comments | 08 Apr 25 10:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
geenat ◴[08 Apr 25 17:36 UTC] No.43624362[source]▶
IMHO they should be a good steward and toss the Wireguard guy a mil considering Tailscale is pretty much Wireguard with a GUI on top.
replies(5): >>43624486 #>>43624493 #>>43624614 #>>43624907 #>>43626644 #
aborsy ◴[08 Apr 25 17:46 UTC] No.43624493[source]▶
This is not correct. Wireguard establishes a tunnel between peer A and B, and its simplicity stops there. Tailscale does tons of complex networking, filtering, nat traversal, DNS, file sharing, etc. Wireguard is a small part of the codebase today, which has grown a lot.

It’s a bit like saying Dropbox is just a GUI on top of TLS.

replies(4): >>43624594 #>>43624613 #>>43624623 #>>43624826 #
homebrewer ◴[08 Apr 25 17:55 UTC] No.43624613[source]▶
Most of this was successfully done 20 years ago by tinc, which is a project written by a couple of European guys in their free time. It even supports routing traffic through other peers and does peer discovery just like BitTorrent (but before BitTorrent even existed) — there is no need for a central server.

What tailscale has over it is hype, lots and lots of hype. Also a much more well thought out, and arguably more secure VPN protocol underneath, which is why GP's comment is on point.

replies(3): >>43624715 #>>43625031 #>>43626239 #
1. RealityVoid ◴[08 Apr 25 18:05 UTC] No.43624715[source]▶
And ease of use, IMHO. That's a bit one with these kind of things. I will admit not having used tinc but I imagine it's not as polished.

Polish costs effort and money and it also really truly saves time and makes for a better product. So that matters.

replies(1): >>43624913 #
2. mikepurvis ◴[08 Apr 25 18:24 UTC] No.43624913[source]▶
It definitely matters. I used tinc extensively at a prior gig, and it not having a story for its own key distribution was exceedingly painful.