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Show HN: Octelium – FOSS Alternative to Teleport, Cloudflare, Tailscale, Ngrok

(github.com)
354 points geoctl | 2 comments | 29 Jun 25 11:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

I have been working on Octelium for quite a few years now but it was open sourced only by late May 2025. Octelium, as described more in detail in the repo's README, is simply an open source, self-hosted, unified platform for zero trust resource access that is primarily meant to be a modern alternative to corporate VPNs and remote access tools. It can operate as a remote access/corporate VPN (i.e. alternative to Twingate, Tailscale, OpenVPN Access Server, etc...), a ZTNA/BeyondCorp platform (i.e. alterntive to Cloudflare Access, Teleport, Google BeyondCorp, etc...), and it can also operate as an API/AI gateway, an infrastructure for MCP and A2A architectures and meshes, an ngrok alternative, a homelab infrastructure or even as a more advanced Kubernetes ingress. It's basically designed to operate like a unified Kubernetes-like scalable architecture for zero trust secure/remote access that's suitable for different human-to-workload and workload-to-workload environments. You can read more in detail the full set of main features and links about how it works in the repo's README or directly in the docs https://octelium.com/docs
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mzhaase ◴[29 Jun 25 13:29 UTC] No.44412985[source]▶
I have an immediate complete distrust to anything that throws around so many buzzwords. This is the github page and I still don't understand what it even does, specifically.
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geoctl ◴[29 Jun 25 13:32 UTC] No.44413008[source]▶
I'd appreciate if you could provide me a list of those buzzwords so that I can improve the readme.
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1. et1337 ◴[30 Jun 25 03:37 UTC] No.44419094[source]▶
You’re getting a lot of negative feedback but I think it’s mostly just people who don’t speak (or actively hate) enterprise jargon. Hacker News is not super enterprisey. Just don’t respond. I work for a company called StrongDM and we basically do exactly what Octelium does. I was able to determine that pretty quickly from your website which is not common. Enterprise security is just inherently a buzzwordy, vague cloud of companies all competing to own the magic quadrant.

That said, you are also including some buzzwords on your homepage that appeal to Hacker News folks, like “self-hosted”. That will get a blank stare from enterprise folks.

So I think you should pick one audience or the other. Tailscale took the strategy of appealing to Hacker News types and then shifting up market from there. My company appeals directly to the biggest enterprises we can find and the difference is stark.

I think you’ll get less negative feedback if you choose one of these target audiences and focus on them exclusively.

edit: by the way, Octelium looks awesome, well done!

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2. geoctl ◴[30 Jun 25 03:50 UTC] No.44419172[source]▶
Thank you really for your kind comment. I am not really against negative comments because they might actually lead to improvements. And btw I am personally a fan of what StrongDM has been doing lately especially when it comes with ABAC and Cedar. This is what I've been trying to achieve in Octelium with CEL and OPA.