4 ms·

I recently tested zero tier for a company use case (mobile development, giving a dev phone access to a dev computer, or allowing sharing between dev computers;

I recently tested zero tier for a company use case (mobile development, giving a dev phone access to a dev computer, or allowing sharing between dev computers; basically sharing something with a colleague). Also tested Tail Scale. Some feedback (only writing this to help you improve): 1. Your UI is horrible. Hire 1-2 front-end/designers and copy everything that tail scale does right. 2. You should add a concept of users with e.g. GitHub as SSO-provider, like tail scale does. Maybe that’s what you’re releasing now? 3. Your docs are very bad compared to tail scale, and you should have much more docs on common scenarios and use cases. For example, mine wasn’t mentioned but is fairly common. You are losing a lot of business here. 4. iOS VPN auto connect functionality is good. 5. You should add some type of global dns, such that we could map all devices/users like this: macbook1.jane.my-company.net (resolve via your network; you host the dns, we provide our domain). Basically what Consul does. 6. If user is authed (see 1 above), auth of devices should be optional. 7. Your language for network rules is too complicated. 8. My impression was that your network software is better than TailScale, but in every other way they beat you (docs, UI, usability, features). 9. iOS app is ugly and have obvious bugs, like you can’t enter text in fields in lower case without hassle. Couldn’t actually get my use-case to work on tailscale either. They stuff they’re missing is in the works though. Will revisit you both in 6 months. I’m rooting for you, but you must understand that it’s not only about software, all the packaging around it is also important (and you are severely lacking in this area).

api 4y ago
The SSO release today adds a concept of users. That's what it's all about. You are 1000% right about UI/UX. It was good for networking software years ago but the ecosystem has generally improved since then. If anyone who is reading wants to help: https://jobs.lever.co/zerotier/90436aee-8e55-406d-9053-a0c26f542862 https://jobs.lever.co/zerotier/90436aee-8e55-406d-9053-a0c26... Location is set to Cincinnati because we want to nucleate more engineers in this region but the position is open to anyone in the USA. We'll hire anywhere if someone is really good. We're remote-first. Edit: > 7. Your language for network rules is too complicated. It's too low-level. We are researching a higher-level way to edit rules in terms of intent rather than the current pf-esque rules language that requires you to deeply understand TCP/IP and such. That being said it is very powerful and you can do extremely neat stuff with it. It's in some ways more powerful than what you get with enterprise data center SDN products.
- linsomniac 4y ago
  >That being said it is very powerful and you can do extremely neat stuff with it. It's in some ways more powerful than what you get with enterprise data center SDN products. I think that's true, but I have basically 0 confidence that I can implement even simple rules using it, let alone anything more complicated. The thing that was the real show stopper for me and made me switch to Nebula was that there doesn't seem to be a way to self-host a backup controller so that our network can continue to function even if ZeroTier.com is having problems. Unless, that is, I go entirely self-hosted and give up the web management UI, which I think is part of the compelling offer of ZeroTier.
  - grumblez 4y ago
    Hi. ZT team member here. Networks members will continue to be able to communicate with the controller down as long as they were online before the controller went down. Not a full solution, I know. Otherwise, it's a difficult problem to solve. The only way we could let you run a network controller as a back up right now would be to give you the private key for the controller, which would allow you to change everybody else's network on that controller, too. Not the best of ideas giving that info away!
    - linsomniac 4y ago
      Would be nice to be able to buy the web UI to manage a private set of controllers...
      - api 4y ago
        That's in the queue. Will probably start by making it a turn-key marketplace "appliance" in AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. marketplaces, then release for on-prem.
- VoidWhisperer 4y ago
  Perhaps this is more common than I am aware, but why cram both UX Designer and front-end engineer into one role? Usually at many places I've seen, those are two distinct roles with distinct responsibilities - this might be because the overall overlapping group that can do both UX design (wireframing, general design, etc) and engineering is a relatively small group I guess. This just stuck out to me a bit because those seem like two distinct area of expertise
linsomniac 4y ago
>1. Your UI is horrible. Hire 1-2 front-end/designers and copy everything that tail scale does right. I don't think that's entirely fair to say "horrible". It does everything I've needed of it quite well. The design sensibilities are just... I'm not sure what the right word is, but maybe "ugly" is good enough. I remember when I first looked at it I thought "this is going to be horrible", but once I started using it the functionality was pretty good. For example, I'd call it better than DefinedNetworks from a usability standpoint, because you aren't clicking in and out of a bunch of things, but DN is definitely easier on the eyes.

api 4y ago

The SSO release today adds a concept of users. That's what it's all about. You are 1000% right about UI/UX. It was good for networking software years ago but the ecosystem has generally improved since then. If anyone who is reading wants to help: https://jobs.lever.co/zerotier/90436aee-8e55-406d-9053-a0c26f542862 https://jobs.lever.co/zerotier/90436aee-8e55-406d-9053-a0c26... Location is set to Cincinnati because we want to nucleate more engineers in this region but the position is open to anyone in the USA. We'll hire anywhere if someone is really good. We're remote-first. Edit: > 7. Your language for network rules is too complicated. It's too low-level. We are researching a higher-level way to edit rules in terms of intent rather than the current pf-esque rules language that requires you to deeply understand TCP/IP and such. That being said it is very powerful and you can do extremely neat stuff with it. It's in some ways more powerful than what you get with enterprise data center SDN products.

linsomniac 4y ago
>That being said it is very powerful and you can do extremely neat stuff with it. It's in some ways more powerful than what you get with enterprise data center SDN products. I think that's true, but I have basically 0 confidence that I can implement even simple rules using it, let alone anything more complicated. The thing that was the real show stopper for me and made me switch to Nebula was that there doesn't seem to be a way to self-host a backup controller so that our network can continue to function even if ZeroTier.com is having problems. Unless, that is, I go entirely self-hosted and give up the web management UI, which I think is part of the compelling offer of ZeroTier.
- grumblez 4y ago
  Hi. ZT team member here. Networks members will continue to be able to communicate with the controller down as long as they were online before the controller went down. Not a full solution, I know. Otherwise, it's a difficult problem to solve. The only way we could let you run a network controller as a back up right now would be to give you the private key for the controller, which would allow you to change everybody else's network on that controller, too. Not the best of ideas giving that info away!
  - linsomniac 4y ago
    Would be nice to be able to buy the web UI to manage a private set of controllers...
    - api 4y ago
      That's in the queue. Will probably start by making it a turn-key marketplace "appliance" in AWS, Azure, GCP, etc. marketplaces, then release for on-prem.
VoidWhisperer 4y ago
Perhaps this is more common than I am aware, but why cram both UX Designer and front-end engineer into one role? Usually at many places I've seen, those are two distinct roles with distinct responsibilities - this might be because the overall overlapping group that can do both UX design (wireframing, general design, etc) and engineering is a relatively small group I guess. This just stuck out to me a bit because those seem like two distinct area of expertise

linsomniac 4y ago

>1. Your UI is horrible. Hire 1-2 front-end/designers and copy everything that tail scale does right. I don't think that's entirely fair to say "horrible". It does everything I've needed of it quite well. The design sensibilities are just... I'm not sure what the right word is, but maybe "ugly" is good enough. I remember when I first looked at it I thought "this is going to be horrible", but once I started using it the functionality was pretty good. For example, I'd call it better than DefinedNetworks from a usability standpoint, because you aren't clicking in and out of a bunch of things, but DN is definitely easier on the eyes.