5 ms·

Same! And the best thing is that you can install Tailscale, so you can connect to your tailnet, and exit all traffic through one of your nodes (e.g., your home/

Same! And the best thing is that you can install Tailscale, so you can connect to your tailnet, and exit all traffic through one of your nodes (e.g., your home/office network). It's incredibly useful, with the added bonus that you don't need to install tailscale client in any of your travel devices (phone, tablet, work computer, etc).

echelon 10mo ago
These are neat in that you can jump on and extend existing wifi infra, but it'd be nice if they also included 5G. I want a product that does both. It's cool to have your own network in a hotel. But it'd be nice to be able to do that on the road, away from public wifi, internationally, whenever - which hotspots do. But at the same time, it'd be nice to be able to do the WiFi thing too to cut back on data usage. I frequently blow through my hotspot data. I'd rather this be in one device instead of two. Beggars can't be choosers, though, I suppose?
- sokoloff 10mo ago
  I’m using a GLinet GL-XE3000 for that and it’s great. Initial setup of the 5G eSIM on a physical SIM took a little searching but it’s been rock solid and having consistent access on the road and hotels has been great for family travel. It has a built-in battery, but I’ve never really tested the duration (I suspect it’s 3-6 hours) as I put it on its AC adapter in the hotel and the n a cigarette lighter adapter in the car, so the battery gets used 15-45 minutes at a time to bridge between those two places. I like it enough that I might buy a second, more compact unit for when space is more a premium, but I’ve been really happy with this one.
  - SergeAx 10mo ago
    What is your usage scenario for this device? It's $400 and 3/4 kg.
    - sokoloff 10mo ago
      I bought that specific model to provide connectivity for our robotics team’s pit computers. For this need, good antenna performance is key, since different venues differ wildly in WiFi and cell coverage and when we setup the evening before comps, I want the best chance of getting a solid connection and offering it to the pit LAN. But now that I have it, the device is handy for family travel as well. Put an unlimited data eSIM in the device and everyone has “unlimited” data n the road and when we arrive at a hotel or AirBnB, one person signs it on to wifi and everyone is connected, including tailscale connections to home. If I was doing personal and work travel only, I’d look for a smaller unit, but still with a decent battery.
    - asymmetric 10mo ago
      According to their website, it weighs 761g.
      - SergeAx 10mo ago
        Right, 3/4 kg is 750 g.
        asymmetric 10mo ago
        Oh wow, I got completely confused by this usage, and thought it meant 3 to 4 kilograms :)
        SergeAx 10mo ago
        I will use ¾ next time)
jasonkester 10mo ago
I’m seeing a lot of this same comment here, so I went to check out this tailscale thing, which clearly I must need. Can anybody explain what Tailscale is, does, or why everybody seems to have it? Looking at their website, it’s just a huge wall of business jargon. Really! Read it. It’s nothing but a list of enterprise terminology. There’s a “how it works “ page full of more (different) jargon, acronyms and buzzwords, but no simple explanation of why everybody on this thread seems to be paying money for this thing? Any help? Should I just pay them my $6/month and hope I figure it out at some point?
- KnuthIsGod 10mo ago
  Basically it is managed Wireguard. Tailscale does say it, but it is buried under marketing speak.
  - quaintdev 10mo ago
    This. People are doing the same thing that OP mentioned in this thread.
  - walthamstow 10mo ago
    It's also P2P mesh rather than hub and spoke which is quite important
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
      It’s worth pointing out that it can be both. The hub and spoke model, relays, is often used for cloud setups where the overhead of installing clients on nodes is not worth the tradeoff
- konradb 10mo ago
  I don't think you need to pay $6 a month to try it out. Install it on all the machines you want. When you are running it on the machine, it is networked to the other machines that are running it. Now make an 'exit node' on one of those machines by selecting it in the UI, and all your gear can access the internet via that exit node. Your phone can run it. Your apple tv can run it. You can have multiple exit nodes. So you can have a worldwide network and not once did you have to open ports in firewalls etc.
kwanbix 10mo ago
> with the added bonus that you don't need to install tailscale client in any of your travel devices (phone, tablet, work computer, etc). I am sorry, this confuses me. If I don't have a lclient, for example in my laptop, how does my laptop uses Tailscale then? Also, TailScale Personal says 3 users. Is that a problem for as we are 4? (me, wife, son, doughter).
- mbreese 10mo ago
  If Tailscale is installed on your router, then any client will also be able to connect to Tailscale networks. Fo example, if you have a default route back to your home network on the router, any client will also connect through that tunnel back through your home. This assumes you are using your travel router to connect your laptop as opposed to say the hotel wifi. (In this scenario, your travel router is connected to both the hotel wifi as an uplink and Tailscale.)
  - kwanbix 10mo ago
    Oh, got it. What about the users? Do I need 4 for my family of 4? Or are the 3 users included in the free plan just admin users?
    - devilbunny 10mo ago
      You only need separate users if you want to restrict certain features (devices, apps, etc.) to only certain users (i.e., it's more of a business thing). My wife's machines all use my username because... she lives with me; if she wanted suddenly to learn networking and computers and hack all our stuff, she could do it anyway since she has physical access. So pretty much anyone you would trust on your LAN can be trusted with your Tailscale user. You can just log yourself into Tailscale on the kids' devices and then use the admin console to make those devices' logins never expire. They can use all the features, but they don't know your authentication method and thus can't get admin access themselves. About the only situation in which the typical home user would need multiple accounts would be if someone was physically away from you and had a new device they needed to connect to your tailnet (their term for your collection of devices, services, etc.) but you didn't want to share your password with them. If they're physically near you, you just authenticate their device and hand it back to them.
master_crab 10mo ago
I do want to point out that dumping all of your traffic through a home/office network is not always a good idea. YMMV, but if you are in, say, LA, and pushed your 0.0.0.0 traffic through your home in NY, you just added quite a bit of latency. This is great for keeping things in a LAN, but make sure you use your network rules correctly and don’t dump everything to your home network unless you need to. (I too have a gli slate, but I use UI at home so will consider this when it comes out)
- malfist 10mo ago
  I disagree. DNS is generally unencrypted and leaking that over whatever open wifi you're on is generally worse from a privacy perspective than the latency you add bouncing through your home where you probably have encrypted DNS setup. Even if you don't visit any http sites, you never know what might phone home over http, so an OS level VPN provides foolproof privacy at the cost of a tiny bit of latency.
  - jms703 10mo ago
    Using encrypted DNS doesn't necessitate routing all your traffic through your home network. You can still encrypt all your traffic by using an encrypted DNS service or, if you really want to, a VPN service. But moving everything through your home network is not necessary, especially if you have any kind of usage caps.
    - master_crab 10mo ago
      And to further reinforce this point, one of the basic config variables for wireguard is your dns servers. You could literally send no traffic but your dns queries to the wg tunnel.
    - malfist 10mo ago
      DNS is just one example. Like I said on my post you never know what data might be sent home in plaintext
kstrauser 10mo ago
We’re from the US but were recently in Germany. Sometimes we were completely exhausted after a long day and just wanted to rest in our room a little before going to sleep. Our motel had like 2 English speaking channels and both sucked. We watched a lot of German TV because it was interesting, even if we could barely understand what was going on. After some time doing that, it was a pleasure watching some Hulu, courtesy of connecting to WireGuard back at our house in California so that we had an American IP.
- brewdad 10mo ago
  I did the same thing recently while visiting family in SE Asia. I wanted to watch my team's bowl game but American college football is unknown in that part of the world. A Wireguard connection back to my home router gave me the ESPN access I pay for in the US. A few services didn't work because they required my mobile device's location services (which still showed my in Asia). I'm sure I could have found a workaround for that but wasn't properly motivated to put in the effort for a short visit. In a similar vein, I was able to troubleshoot a problem with our NAS from a cellular connection on a boat near Bali a couple years ago. My son needed access to some files for his college homework but couldn't access it remotely. I was able to access it and reconfigure a setting that had changed during an update and restore his access. The internet feels like magic sometimes.

echelon 10mo ago

These are neat in that you can jump on and extend existing wifi infra, but it'd be nice if they also included 5G. I want a product that does both. It's cool to have your own network in a hotel. But it'd be nice to be able to do that on the road, away from public wifi, internationally, whenever - which hotspots do. But at the same time, it'd be nice to be able to do the WiFi thing too to cut back on data usage. I frequently blow through my hotspot data. I'd rather this be in one device instead of two. Beggars can't be choosers, though, I suppose?

sokoloff 10mo ago
I’m using a GLinet GL-XE3000 for that and it’s great. Initial setup of the 5G eSIM on a physical SIM took a little searching but it’s been rock solid and having consistent access on the road and hotels has been great for family travel. It has a built-in battery, but I’ve never really tested the duration (I suspect it’s 3-6 hours) as I put it on its AC adapter in the hotel and the n a cigarette lighter adapter in the car, so the battery gets used 15-45 minutes at a time to bridge between those two places. I like it enough that I might buy a second, more compact unit for when space is more a premium, but I’ve been really happy with this one.
- SergeAx 10mo ago
  What is your usage scenario for this device? It's $400 and 3/4 kg.
  - sokoloff 10mo ago
    I bought that specific model to provide connectivity for our robotics team’s pit computers. For this need, good antenna performance is key, since different venues differ wildly in WiFi and cell coverage and when we setup the evening before comps, I want the best chance of getting a solid connection and offering it to the pit LAN. But now that I have it, the device is handy for family travel as well. Put an unlimited data eSIM in the device and everyone has “unlimited” data n the road and when we arrive at a hotel or AirBnB, one person signs it on to wifi and everyone is connected, including tailscale connections to home. If I was doing personal and work travel only, I’d look for a smaller unit, but still with a decent battery.
  - asymmetric 10mo ago
    According to their website, it weighs 761g.
    - SergeAx 10mo ago
      Right, 3/4 kg is 750 g.
      - asymmetric 10mo ago
        Oh wow, I got completely confused by this usage, and thought it meant 3 to 4 kilograms :)
        SergeAx 10mo ago
        I will use ¾ next time)

jasonkester 10mo ago

I’m seeing a lot of this same comment here, so I went to check out this tailscale thing, which clearly I must need. Can anybody explain what Tailscale is, does, or why everybody seems to have it? Looking at their website, it’s just a huge wall of business jargon. Really! Read it. It’s nothing but a list of enterprise terminology. There’s a “how it works “ page full of more (different) jargon, acronyms and buzzwords, but no simple explanation of why everybody on this thread seems to be paying money for this thing? Any help? Should I just pay them my $6/month and hope I figure it out at some point?

KnuthIsGod 10mo ago
Basically it is managed Wireguard. Tailscale does say it, but it is buried under marketing speak.
- quaintdev 10mo ago
  This. People are doing the same thing that OP mentioned in this thread.
- walthamstow 10mo ago
  It's also P2P mesh rather than hub and spoke which is quite important
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 10mo ago
    It’s worth pointing out that it can be both. The hub and spoke model, relays, is often used for cloud setups where the overhead of installing clients on nodes is not worth the tradeoff
konradb 10mo ago
I don't think you need to pay $6 a month to try it out. Install it on all the machines you want. When you are running it on the machine, it is networked to the other machines that are running it. Now make an 'exit node' on one of those machines by selecting it in the UI, and all your gear can access the internet via that exit node. Your phone can run it. Your apple tv can run it. You can have multiple exit nodes. So you can have a worldwide network and not once did you have to open ports in firewalls etc.

kwanbix 10mo ago

> with the added bonus that you don't need to install tailscale client in any of your travel devices (phone, tablet, work computer, etc). I am sorry, this confuses me. If I don't have a lclient, for example in my laptop, how does my laptop uses Tailscale then? Also, TailScale Personal says 3 users. Is that a problem for as we are 4? (me, wife, son, doughter).

mbreese 10mo ago
If Tailscale is installed on your router, then any client will also be able to connect to Tailscale networks. Fo example, if you have a default route back to your home network on the router, any client will also connect through that tunnel back through your home. This assumes you are using your travel router to connect your laptop as opposed to say the hotel wifi. (In this scenario, your travel router is connected to both the hotel wifi as an uplink and Tailscale.)
- kwanbix 10mo ago
  Oh, got it. What about the users? Do I need 4 for my family of 4? Or are the 3 users included in the free plan just admin users?
  - devilbunny 10mo ago
    You only need separate users if you want to restrict certain features (devices, apps, etc.) to only certain users (i.e., it's more of a business thing). My wife's machines all use my username because... she lives with me; if she wanted suddenly to learn networking and computers and hack all our stuff, she could do it anyway since she has physical access. So pretty much anyone you would trust on your LAN can be trusted with your Tailscale user. You can just log yourself into Tailscale on the kids' devices and then use the admin console to make those devices' logins never expire. They can use all the features, but they don't know your authentication method and thus can't get admin access themselves. About the only situation in which the typical home user would need multiple accounts would be if someone was physically away from you and had a new device they needed to connect to your tailnet (their term for your collection of devices, services, etc.) but you didn't want to share your password with them. If they're physically near you, you just authenticate their device and hand it back to them.

master_crab 10mo ago

I do want to point out that dumping all of your traffic through a home/office network is not always a good idea. YMMV, but if you are in, say, LA, and pushed your 0.0.0.0 traffic through your home in NY, you just added quite a bit of latency. This is great for keeping things in a LAN, but make sure you use your network rules correctly and don’t dump everything to your home network unless you need to. (I too have a gli slate, but I use UI at home so will consider this when it comes out)

malfist 10mo ago
I disagree. DNS is generally unencrypted and leaking that over whatever open wifi you're on is generally worse from a privacy perspective than the latency you add bouncing through your home where you probably have encrypted DNS setup. Even if you don't visit any http sites, you never know what might phone home over http, so an OS level VPN provides foolproof privacy at the cost of a tiny bit of latency.
- jms703 10mo ago
  Using encrypted DNS doesn't necessitate routing all your traffic through your home network. You can still encrypt all your traffic by using an encrypted DNS service or, if you really want to, a VPN service. But moving everything through your home network is not necessary, especially if you have any kind of usage caps.
  - master_crab 10mo ago
    And to further reinforce this point, one of the basic config variables for wireguard is your dns servers. You could literally send no traffic but your dns queries to the wg tunnel.
  - malfist 10mo ago
    DNS is just one example. Like I said on my post you never know what data might be sent home in plaintext

kstrauser 10mo ago

We’re from the US but were recently in Germany. Sometimes we were completely exhausted after a long day and just wanted to rest in our room a little before going to sleep. Our motel had like 2 English speaking channels and both sucked. We watched a lot of German TV because it was interesting, even if we could barely understand what was going on. After some time doing that, it was a pleasure watching some Hulu, courtesy of connecting to WireGuard back at our house in California so that we had an American IP.

brewdad 10mo ago
I did the same thing recently while visiting family in SE Asia. I wanted to watch my team's bowl game but American college football is unknown in that part of the world. A Wireguard connection back to my home router gave me the ESPN access I pay for in the US. A few services didn't work because they required my mobile device's location services (which still showed my in Asia). I'm sure I could have found a workaround for that but wasn't properly motivated to put in the effort for a short visit. In a similar vein, I was able to troubleshoot a problem with our NAS from a cellular connection on a boat near Bali a couple years ago. My son needed access to some files for his college homework but couldn't access it remotely. I was able to access it and reconfigure a setting that had changed during an update and restore his access. The internet feels like magic sometimes.