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I love tailscale's technology and their contributions to the security ecosystem, but I can't help but take a contrarian angle to many of the comments here... T

by ogaj 3y ago

I love tailscale's technology and their contributions to the security ecosystem, but I can't help but take a contrarian angle to many of the comments here... This feels like a bad idea, and perhaps it signals defeat in the enterprise space (where the tech would provide the most value, imo). Tailscale raised $100M last year, surely based on a theory of growth upmarket. While this partnership surely provides value to personal consumers, it feels, at best, a distraction from the larger opportunity and, at worst, counterproductive to achieving it. I'm skeptical of the obvious counterpoint that this assists a flywheel of greater b2c satisfaction leading to b2b success...

bananapub 3y ago
tailscale has many employees, adding a small patch to wireguard client programming and strapping in mullvad account provisioning seems like a very small amount of effort for a pretty cool feature that also earns some recurring money from the hitherto freeloading nerd customers.
- ogaj 3y ago
  Point well taken. My comment was primarily based on two other factors: a) the strategic signal it sends re developer resource allocation and b) the market signal it sends, selling a security solution while partnering with a company (not a knock - I've been a mullvad customer!) that provides solutions which are frequently used to bypass compliance/regulatory controls.
  - ignoramous 3y ago
    True, but if it is any positive signal, FiloSottile (golang crypto lead) vouched for Mullvad integration: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/2880#issuecomment-1072622664 https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/2880#issuecomm... I think Tailscale going after 3 wildly different market segments (hobbyists, smb/teams, enterprises) [0] is why we're likely to see more such features, not less. [0] https://tailscale.com/blog/pricing-v3/ https://tailscale.com/blog/pricing-v3/
dewey 3y ago
It doesn't sound like that's a big distraction for Mullvad as it seems most of the actual changes are done on the Tailscale side, enabling users to use Mullvad proxied through their setup. Partnering with similarly aligned organizations like Tailscale and Tor seems like a good way of increasing the userbase without engaging in sketchy business models like the rest of the VPN competition.
bradfitz 3y ago
> I'm skeptical of the obvious counterpoint that this assists a flywheel of greater b2c satisfaction leading to b2b success... Okay. But it does? Our stats continue to show that making nerds happy (we're also nerds) leads to more corporate sales. (https://tailscale.com/blog/free-plan/ https://tailscale.com/blog/free-plan/ etc) So if we can make something that we want ourselves and our friends and fellow nerds also like, and that also then leads to more corporate sales... why not?
- mdeeks 3y ago
  Anecdata: It directly lead us (Instacart) to try and then adopt Tailscale. Many of us had used it at home and were happy nerds. This gave it a huge initial leg up vs other "enterprisey" VPNs when we were in the evaluation stage. Tailscale sold itself after that. The docs were excellent and it really is simple to use and run. I was able to do a full PoC in day and prove that I could join all of our environments and clouds into one VPN and have DNS resolving correctly everywhere.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - LilBytes 3y ago
    Same here. Tried Tailscsle at home, took it to work and implemented it for our own needs. Seems to me making nerds happy had a great conversion rate to paying customers.
- throwaway20222 3y ago
  This is a pretty tried and true process historically as well, just… “ask your developer.”
- agnokapathetic 3y ago
  A lot of the people making purchasing decisions to acquire products like Tailscale are in security departments and have a very low opinion of Mullvad (VPN of choice for all kinds of abusive/fraud/hacking traffic).
vineyardmike 3y ago
> I'm skeptical of the obvious counterpoint that this assists a flywheel of greater b2c satisfaction leading to b2b success... This past summer I quit my job as Engr #3 of a startup. While there, I desperately tried to convince 1+2 that we should use tailscale instead of rolling our own VPN with wire guard and EC2. Couldn’t do it. The product was too magical and everyone was suspicious. I use it at home and tried very hard to make the case. This feels more like a long term investment in breaking the “mesh” basis for their product. IMO it’s part of the magic and partially a problem. I couldn’t explain the security model for the mesh (as an outsider), and according to some comments it seems like it causes battery issues on mobile devices.
- Operyl 3y ago
  They've been, over the past year, putting a significant amount of work into fixing the battery life issues. It is largely resolved for me, and it seems according to a recent article the vast majority of their users. https://tailscale.dev/blog/battery-life https://tailscale.dev/blog/battery-life * 2% still affected according to https://tailscale.com/blog/reimagining-tailscale-for-ios/ https://tailscale.com/blog/reimagining-tailscale-for-ios/
s3p 3y ago
This also has to be a nightmare for speed. Making two separate tunnels, then browsing the internet through them? Streaming or using virtually anything other than static HTML pages would be a pain.
- acheong08 3y ago
  Mullvad servers are fast enough. On some occasions, I can only connect to Mullvad through 3 hops. Me -> Chinese VPS -> DigitalOcean VPS -> Mullvad. I can still stream YouTube just fine (1MiB/s) Context: during government meetings in a particular region, their network policies would become more restrictive so that it’s only possible to connect to Chinese IPs. Chinese VPSs are exempt but cannot connect to Mullvad directly due to a Fortinet rule. Connections are done with a mix of Trojan-gfw, xray, and WireGuard

by ogaj 3y ago

bananapub 3y ago

tailscale has many employees, adding a small patch to wireguard client programming and strapping in mullvad account provisioning seems like a very small amount of effort for a pretty cool feature that also earns some recurring money from the hitherto freeloading nerd customers.

ogaj 3y ago
Point well taken. My comment was primarily based on two other factors: a) the strategic signal it sends re developer resource allocation and b) the market signal it sends, selling a security solution while partnering with a company (not a knock - I've been a mullvad customer!) that provides solutions which are frequently used to bypass compliance/regulatory controls.
- ignoramous 3y ago
  True, but if it is any positive signal, FiloSottile (golang crypto lead) vouched for Mullvad integration: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/2880#issuecomment-1072622664 https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/2880#issuecomm... I think Tailscale going after 3 wildly different market segments (hobbyists, smb/teams, enterprises) [0] is why we're likely to see more such features, not less. [0] https://tailscale.com/blog/pricing-v3/ https://tailscale.com/blog/pricing-v3/

dewey 3y ago

It doesn't sound like that's a big distraction for Mullvad as it seems most of the actual changes are done on the Tailscale side, enabling users to use Mullvad proxied through their setup. Partnering with similarly aligned organizations like Tailscale and Tor seems like a good way of increasing the userbase without engaging in sketchy business models like the rest of the VPN competition.

bradfitz 3y ago

> I'm skeptical of the obvious counterpoint that this assists a flywheel of greater b2c satisfaction leading to b2b success... Okay. But it does? Our stats continue to show that making nerds happy (we're also nerds) leads to more corporate sales. (https://tailscale.com/blog/free-plan/ https://tailscale.com/blog/free-plan/ etc) So if we can make something that we want ourselves and our friends and fellow nerds also like, and that also then leads to more corporate sales... why not?

mdeeks 3y ago
Anecdata: It directly lead us (Instacart) to try and then adopt Tailscale. Many of us had used it at home and were happy nerds. This gave it a huge initial leg up vs other "enterprisey" VPNs when we were in the evaluation stage. Tailscale sold itself after that. The docs were excellent and it really is simple to use and run. I was able to do a full PoC in day and prove that I could join all of our environments and clouds into one VPN and have DNS resolving correctly everywhere.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- LilBytes 3y ago
  Same here. Tried Tailscsle at home, took it to work and implemented it for our own needs. Seems to me making nerds happy had a great conversion rate to paying customers.
throwaway20222 3y ago
This is a pretty tried and true process historically as well, just… “ask your developer.”
agnokapathetic 3y ago
A lot of the people making purchasing decisions to acquire products like Tailscale are in security departments and have a very low opinion of Mullvad (VPN of choice for all kinds of abusive/fraud/hacking traffic).

vineyardmike 3y ago

> I'm skeptical of the obvious counterpoint that this assists a flywheel of greater b2c satisfaction leading to b2b success... This past summer I quit my job as Engr #3 of a startup. While there, I desperately tried to convince 1+2 that we should use tailscale instead of rolling our own VPN with wire guard and EC2. Couldn’t do it. The product was too magical and everyone was suspicious. I use it at home and tried very hard to make the case. This feels more like a long term investment in breaking the “mesh” basis for their product. IMO it’s part of the magic and partially a problem. I couldn’t explain the security model for the mesh (as an outsider), and according to some comments it seems like it causes battery issues on mobile devices.

Operyl 3y ago
They've been, over the past year, putting a significant amount of work into fixing the battery life issues. It is largely resolved for me, and it seems according to a recent article the vast majority of their users. https://tailscale.dev/blog/battery-life https://tailscale.dev/blog/battery-life * 2% still affected according to https://tailscale.com/blog/reimagining-tailscale-for-ios/ https://tailscale.com/blog/reimagining-tailscale-for-ios/

s3p 3y ago

This also has to be a nightmare for speed. Making two separate tunnels, then browsing the internet through them? Streaming or using virtually anything other than static HTML pages would be a pain.

acheong08 3y ago
Mullvad servers are fast enough. On some occasions, I can only connect to Mullvad through 3 hops. Me -> Chinese VPS -> DigitalOcean VPS -> Mullvad. I can still stream YouTube just fine (1MiB/s) Context: during government meetings in a particular region, their network policies would become more restrictive so that it’s only possible to connect to Chinese IPs. Chinese VPSs are exempt but cannot connect to Mullvad directly due to a Fortinet rule. Connections are done with a mix of Trojan-gfw, xray, and WireGuard