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I agree! Before Tailscale I was completely skeptical of self hosting. Now I have tailscale on an old Kindle downloading epubs from a server running Copyparty.

by philips 9mo ago

I agree! Before Tailscale I was completely skeptical of self hosting. Now I have tailscale on an old Kindle downloading epubs from a server running Copyparty. Its great!

ryandrake 9mo ago
Maybe I'm dumb, but I still don't quite understand the value-add of Tailscale over what Wireguard or some other VPN already provides. HN has tried to explain it to me but it just seems like sugar on top of a plain old VPN. Kind of like how "pi-hole" is just sugar on top of dnsmasq, and Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing.
- Skunkleton 9mo ago
  Yes, that is really all it is.
- mfcl 9mo ago
  It's plug and play.
  - Forgeties79 9mo ago
    And some people may not value that but a lot of people do. It’s part of why Plex has become so popular and fewer people know about Jellyfin. One is turnkey, the other isn’t. I could send a one page bullet point list of instructions to people with very modest computer literacy and they would be up and running in under an hour on all of their devices with Plex in and outside of their network. From that point forward it’s basically like having your own Netflix.
- Jtsummers 9mo ago
  I think you answered the question. Sugar. It's easier than managing your own Wireguard connections. Adding a device just means logging into the Tailscale client, no need to distribute information to or from other devices. Get a new phone while traveling because yours was stolen? You can set up Tailscale and be back on your private network in a couple minutes. Why did people use Dropbox instead of setting up their own FTP servers? Because it was easier.
  - johnisgood 9mo ago
    Yeah, but "people" here are alleged software engieners. It is quite disheartening.
    - wiether 9mo ago
      First and foremost they are humans, with a limited time on Earth. Being a software engineer doesn't mean you want to spend you free time tinkering about your self-hosting setup and doing support for your users. With Tailscale, not only you don't have to care about most things since _it just works_, but also on-boarding of casual users is straightforward. Same goes for Plex. I want to watch movies/shows, I don't want to spend time tinkering with my setup. And Plex provides exactly that. Ditto for my family/friends that can access my library with the same simple experience as Netflix or whatever. Meanwhile, I have a coworker who want to own/manage everything. So they don't want to use Tailscale and they dropped Plex when they forced to use the third-party login system. Now they watch less than a third than they used to be, and they share their setup with nobody since it's too complicated to do. To each their own, but my goal is to enjoy my setup and share it with others. Tailscale and Plex give me that.
      - johnisgood 9mo ago
        There is a difference between "I choose not to" and "I cannot". The thread is full of people saying Tailscale "unlocked" self-hosting, implying capability, not time savings or time preference. Choosing convenience is fine. But if basic port forwarding or WireGuard is beyond someone's skill set, "software engineer" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I am not saying they are, but if it really is the case, then yeah. As for file sharing... I remember when non-SWEs knew how to torrent movies, used DC++ and so on. These days even SWEs have no idea how to do it. It is mind-boggling.
        wiether 9mo ago
        To me the "unlocked" is just another hyperbole used by some people, partly because they lack initial knowledge, partly because its click-bait. The way I understand it is more like "without the ease of use provided by X, even though I could have done it, I wouldn't have done it because it would require time and energy that I'm not willing to put in". Since we're talking about self-hosting, to me the main focus is not skill set but time and energy. There's the same debate around NAS products like Synology that are sold with a high markup, meanwhile "every SWE should be able to make their own NAS using recycled hardware". Sure. And I did all of this: - homemade NAS setup - homemade network setup - homemade mediaplayer setup It was fun and I learned a lot. But I moved to some more convenient tools so that I can just use them as reliable services, and focus on other experimentations/tinkering. To be honest, the fact that you insist that Plex is just "file sharing" that can be replaced by torrents makes me think you either don't know what Plex actually is, or you are acting in bad faith.
- atmosx 9mo ago
  You don’t have to run the control plane and you don’t have to manage DNS & SSL keys for the DNS entries. Additionally the RBAC is pretty easy. All these are manageable through other tools, but it’s more complicated stack to keep up.
- Frotag 9mo ago
  I always assumed it was because a lot of ISPs use CGNAT and using tailscale servers for hole punching is (slightly) easier than renting and configuring a VPS.
- Cyph0n 9mo ago
  It’s a bit more than sugar. 1. 1-command (or step) to have a new device join your network. Wireguard configs and interfaces managed on your behalf. 2. ACLs that allow you to have fine grained control over connectivity. For example, server A should never be able to talk to server B. 3. NAT is handled completely transparently. 4. SSO and other niceties. For me, (1) and (2) in particular make it a huge value add over managing Wireguard setup, configs, and firewall rules manually.
- drnick1 9mo ago
  > Kind of like how "pi-hole" is just sugar on top of dnsmasq, and Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing. Speaking of that, I have always preferred a plain Unbound instance and a Samba server over fancier alternatives. I guess I like my setups extremely barebone.
  - ryandrake 9mo ago
    Yea, my philosophy for self-hosting is "use the smallest amount of software you can in order to do what you really need." So for me, sugar X on top of fundamental functionality Y is always rejected in favor of just configuring Y."
- simonw 9mo ago
  If you're confident that you know how to securely configure and use Wireguard across multiple devices then great, you probably don't need Tailscale for a home lab. Tailscale gives me an app I can install on my iPhone and my Mac and a service I can install on pretty much any Linux device imaginable. I sign into each of those apps once and I'm done. The first time I set it up that took less than five minutes from idea to now-my-devices-are-securely-networked.
- zeroxfe 9mo ago
  > Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing. right, like browsers are just sugar on top of curl
  - edoceo 9mo ago
    curl is just sugar on sockets ;)
    - epistasis 9mo ago
      SSH is just sugar on top of telnet and running your own encryption algorithms by hand on paper and typing in the results.
  - InfinityByTen 9mo ago
    At least postman is :P
- SchemaLoad 9mo ago
  Tailscale is Wireguard but it automatically sets everything up for you, handles DDNS, can punch through NAT and CGNAT, etc. It's also running a Wireguard server on every device so rather than having a hub server in the LAN, it directly connects to every device. Particularly helpful if it's not just one LAN you are trying to connect to, but you have lots of devices in different areas.
- lelandbatey 9mo ago
  If Plex is "just file sharing" then I guarantee you'd find Tailscale "just WireGuard". I enjoy that relative "normies" can depend on it/integrate it without me having to go through annoying bits. I like that it "just works" without requiring loads of annoying networking. For example, my aging mother just got a replacement computer and I am able to make it easy to access and remotely administer by just putting Tailscale on it, and have that work seamlessly with my other devices and connections. If one day I want to fully self-host, then I can run Headscale.
- navigate8310 9mo ago
  Tailscale is able to punch holes in CGNAT which a vanilla wireguard cannot
- BatteryMountain 9mo ago
  Setting up wireguard manually can be a pain in the butt sometimes. Tailscale makes it super easy but then your info flows through their nodes.
- tech_ken 9mo ago
  Managing the wg.conf is a colossal PITA, especially if I'm trying to like provision a new client and don't have access to my main laptop. It's crying out for a CRUD app on top of it, and I think tailscale is basically that plus a little. The value add seems obvious. Also plex is way more than sugar on top of file sharing; it's like filesharing, media management, and a CDN rolled into one product. Soulseek isn't going to handle transcoding for you.
  - epistasis 9mo ago
    I use Tailscale for exactly those reasons, plus the easy SSL certificates and clients for Android and iOS. From this thread, I've learned about Pangolin: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin Which seems very compelling to me too. If it has apps that allow various devices connect to the VPN it might be worth it to me to trial using it instead of Tailscale...

by philips 9mo ago

I agree! Before Tailscale I was completely skeptical of self hosting. Now I have tailscale on an old Kindle downloading epubs from a server running Copyparty. Its great!

ryandrake 9mo ago

Maybe I'm dumb, but I still don't quite understand the value-add of Tailscale over what Wireguard or some other VPN already provides. HN has tried to explain it to me but it just seems like sugar on top of a plain old VPN. Kind of like how "pi-hole" is just sugar on top of dnsmasq, and Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing.

Skunkleton 9mo ago
Yes, that is really all it is.
mfcl 9mo ago
It's plug and play.
- Forgeties79 9mo ago
  And some people may not value that but a lot of people do. It’s part of why Plex has become so popular and fewer people know about Jellyfin. One is turnkey, the other isn’t. I could send a one page bullet point list of instructions to people with very modest computer literacy and they would be up and running in under an hour on all of their devices with Plex in and outside of their network. From that point forward it’s basically like having your own Netflix.
Jtsummers 9mo ago
I think you answered the question. Sugar. It's easier than managing your own Wireguard connections. Adding a device just means logging into the Tailscale client, no need to distribute information to or from other devices. Get a new phone while traveling because yours was stolen? You can set up Tailscale and be back on your private network in a couple minutes. Why did people use Dropbox instead of setting up their own FTP servers? Because it was easier.
- johnisgood 9mo ago
  Yeah, but "people" here are alleged software engieners. It is quite disheartening.
  - wiether 9mo ago
    First and foremost they are humans, with a limited time on Earth. Being a software engineer doesn't mean you want to spend you free time tinkering about your self-hosting setup and doing support for your users. With Tailscale, not only you don't have to care about most things since _it just works_, but also on-boarding of casual users is straightforward. Same goes for Plex. I want to watch movies/shows, I don't want to spend time tinkering with my setup. And Plex provides exactly that. Ditto for my family/friends that can access my library with the same simple experience as Netflix or whatever. Meanwhile, I have a coworker who want to own/manage everything. So they don't want to use Tailscale and they dropped Plex when they forced to use the third-party login system. Now they watch less than a third than they used to be, and they share their setup with nobody since it's too complicated to do. To each their own, but my goal is to enjoy my setup and share it with others. Tailscale and Plex give me that.
    - johnisgood 9mo ago
      There is a difference between "I choose not to" and "I cannot". The thread is full of people saying Tailscale "unlocked" self-hosting, implying capability, not time savings or time preference. Choosing convenience is fine. But if basic port forwarding or WireGuard is beyond someone's skill set, "software engineer" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I am not saying they are, but if it really is the case, then yeah. As for file sharing... I remember when non-SWEs knew how to torrent movies, used DC++ and so on. These days even SWEs have no idea how to do it. It is mind-boggling.
      - wiether 9mo ago
        To me the "unlocked" is just another hyperbole used by some people, partly because they lack initial knowledge, partly because its click-bait. The way I understand it is more like "without the ease of use provided by X, even though I could have done it, I wouldn't have done it because it would require time and energy that I'm not willing to put in". Since we're talking about self-hosting, to me the main focus is not skill set but time and energy. There's the same debate around NAS products like Synology that are sold with a high markup, meanwhile "every SWE should be able to make their own NAS using recycled hardware". Sure. And I did all of this: - homemade NAS setup - homemade network setup - homemade mediaplayer setup It was fun and I learned a lot. But I moved to some more convenient tools so that I can just use them as reliable services, and focus on other experimentations/tinkering. To be honest, the fact that you insist that Plex is just "file sharing" that can be replaced by torrents makes me think you either don't know what Plex actually is, or you are acting in bad faith.
atmosx 9mo ago
You don’t have to run the control plane and you don’t have to manage DNS & SSL keys for the DNS entries. Additionally the RBAC is pretty easy. All these are manageable through other tools, but it’s more complicated stack to keep up.
Frotag 9mo ago
I always assumed it was because a lot of ISPs use CGNAT and using tailscale servers for hole punching is (slightly) easier than renting and configuring a VPS.
Cyph0n 9mo ago
It’s a bit more than sugar. 1. 1-command (or step) to have a new device join your network. Wireguard configs and interfaces managed on your behalf. 2. ACLs that allow you to have fine grained control over connectivity. For example, server A should never be able to talk to server B. 3. NAT is handled completely transparently. 4. SSO and other niceties. For me, (1) and (2) in particular make it a huge value add over managing Wireguard setup, configs, and firewall rules manually.
drnick1 9mo ago
> Kind of like how "pi-hole" is just sugar on top of dnsmasq, and Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing. Speaking of that, I have always preferred a plain Unbound instance and a Samba server over fancier alternatives. I guess I like my setups extremely barebone.
- ryandrake 9mo ago
  Yea, my philosophy for self-hosting is "use the smallest amount of software you can in order to do what you really need." So for me, sugar X on top of fundamental functionality Y is always rejected in favor of just configuring Y."
simonw 9mo ago
If you're confident that you know how to securely configure and use Wireguard across multiple devices then great, you probably don't need Tailscale for a home lab. Tailscale gives me an app I can install on my iPhone and my Mac and a service I can install on pretty much any Linux device imaginable. I sign into each of those apps once and I'm done. The first time I set it up that took less than five minutes from idea to now-my-devices-are-securely-networked.
zeroxfe 9mo ago
> Plex is just sugar on top of file sharing. right, like browsers are just sugar on top of curl
- edoceo 9mo ago
  curl is just sugar on sockets ;)
  - epistasis 9mo ago
    SSH is just sugar on top of telnet and running your own encryption algorithms by hand on paper and typing in the results.
- InfinityByTen 9mo ago
  At least postman is :P
SchemaLoad 9mo ago
Tailscale is Wireguard but it automatically sets everything up for you, handles DDNS, can punch through NAT and CGNAT, etc. It's also running a Wireguard server on every device so rather than having a hub server in the LAN, it directly connects to every device. Particularly helpful if it's not just one LAN you are trying to connect to, but you have lots of devices in different areas.
lelandbatey 9mo ago
If Plex is "just file sharing" then I guarantee you'd find Tailscale "just WireGuard". I enjoy that relative "normies" can depend on it/integrate it without me having to go through annoying bits. I like that it "just works" without requiring loads of annoying networking. For example, my aging mother just got a replacement computer and I am able to make it easy to access and remotely administer by just putting Tailscale on it, and have that work seamlessly with my other devices and connections. If one day I want to fully self-host, then I can run Headscale.
navigate8310 9mo ago
Tailscale is able to punch holes in CGNAT which a vanilla wireguard cannot
BatteryMountain 9mo ago
Setting up wireguard manually can be a pain in the butt sometimes. Tailscale makes it super easy but then your info flows through their nodes.
tech_ken 9mo ago
Managing the wg.conf is a colossal PITA, especially if I'm trying to like provision a new client and don't have access to my main laptop. It's crying out for a CRUD app on top of it, and I think tailscale is basically that plus a little. The value add seems obvious. Also plex is way more than sugar on top of file sharing; it's like filesharing, media management, and a CDN rolled into one product. Soulseek isn't going to handle transcoding for you.
- epistasis 9mo ago
  I use Tailscale for exactly those reasons, plus the easy SSL certificates and clients for Android and iOS. From this thread, I've learned about Pangolin: https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin https://github.com/fosrl/pangolin Which seems very compelling to me too. If it has apps that allow various devices connect to the VPN it might be worth it to me to trial using it instead of Tailscale...