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I have little to no idea what Tailscale does. Is it a VPN like Mullvad? What makes it so special? Ive heard a bit about tailscale networks connecting devices t

by user- 4y ago

I have little to no idea what Tailscale does. Is it a VPN like Mullvad? What makes it so special? Ive heard a bit about tailscale networks connecting devices together easily. Is it for your own network only, or can other people access your tailscale devices directly as well? Ie, I host a minecraft server on my linux desktop. Can tailscale help me in the use case of providing an IP to people to connect to it? Or am I just back to regular old port forwading and my external IP?

leesalminen 4y ago
Tailscale is just fancy software that creates peer to peer encrypted tunnels between your devices using wireguard. You can think of it as a LAN for all your devices regardless of what network they’re physically connected to. The default use case of Tailscale is to have a private LAN, just for you, not your friends. This is changing now, though. Tailscale does as of recently have the ability to do what you’re saying for Minecraft. It’s called Tailscale Funnel. This lets you expose a port on any of your devices to the public internet with a TLS enabled host name. Another option for your Minecraft server is to use Cloudflare Tunnel. Works great for this kind of thing and is pretty much functionally equivalent to Tailscale Funnel.
- xeonmc 4y ago
  Does either Funnel or Tunnel allow this use case for old UDP-based games like Quake etc? I would like to just be able to send strangers a temporary permalink to my server for a one-off session, then turn it off or have it expire automatically once we're finished. This would not be feasible if I have to also ask whomever I come across to install clients, as opposed to just connecting from within the game.
  - telotortium 4y ago
    Seems like they're only TCP, unfortunately.
- apenwarr 4y ago
  I recommend against using Funnel for this use case (because it exposes your server to everyone in the world, not just your trusted users). Tailscale node sharing is free and secure for private networks of friends, and there are lots of people using it with Minecraft: https://tailscale.com/kb/1084/sharing/ https://tailscale.com/kb/1084/sharing/ To answer the question in another thread, node sharing also works with UDP. (Funnel is TCP-only due to the vagaries of IP addresses and TLS certificates when facing the outside world, sigh.)
linsomniac 4y ago
If you want to host a Minecraft server, ZeroTier is probably better. It has a couple of options that make it easier for third parties to be able to connect including automatically authorizing new connecting nodes, or an option where if you connect to a particular ZeroTier network, anyone with your ZeroTier IPv6 can connect to the corresponding port (I forget their exact name, but it's pretty slick).

by user- 4y ago

leesalminen 4y ago

Tailscale is just fancy software that creates peer to peer encrypted tunnels between your devices using wireguard. You can think of it as a LAN for all your devices regardless of what network they’re physically connected to. The default use case of Tailscale is to have a private LAN, just for you, not your friends. This is changing now, though. Tailscale does as of recently have the ability to do what you’re saying for Minecraft. It’s called Tailscale Funnel. This lets you expose a port on any of your devices to the public internet with a TLS enabled host name. Another option for your Minecraft server is to use Cloudflare Tunnel. Works great for this kind of thing and is pretty much functionally equivalent to Tailscale Funnel.

xeonmc 4y ago
Does either Funnel or Tunnel allow this use case for old UDP-based games like Quake etc? I would like to just be able to send strangers a temporary permalink to my server for a one-off session, then turn it off or have it expire automatically once we're finished. This would not be feasible if I have to also ask whomever I come across to install clients, as opposed to just connecting from within the game.
- telotortium 4y ago
  Seems like they're only TCP, unfortunately.
apenwarr 4y ago
I recommend against using Funnel for this use case (because it exposes your server to everyone in the world, not just your trusted users). Tailscale node sharing is free and secure for private networks of friends, and there are lots of people using it with Minecraft: https://tailscale.com/kb/1084/sharing/ https://tailscale.com/kb/1084/sharing/ To answer the question in another thread, node sharing also works with UDP. (Funnel is TCP-only due to the vagaries of IP addresses and TLS certificates when facing the outside world, sigh.)

linsomniac 4y ago

If you want to host a Minecraft server, ZeroTier is probably better. It has a couple of options that make it easier for third parties to be able to connect including automatically authorizing new connecting nodes, or an option where if you connect to a particular ZeroTier network, anyone with your ZeroTier IPv6 can connect to the corresponding port (I forget their exact name, but it's pretty slick).