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Peers might not want to use third party rendezvous servers or relay servers It appears that Tailscale attempts to persuade peers not to run own "DERP" servers

Peers might not want to use third party rendezvous servers or relay servers It appears that Tailscale attempts to persuade peers not to run own "DERP" servers (cf. encouraging peers to run own servers) "In general, you should not need to or want to run this code. The overwhelming majority of Tailscale users (both individuals and companies) do not." "Running your own DERP services requires exeprtise [sic] in multi-layer network and application diagnostics. As the DERP runs multiple protocols at multiple layers and is not a regular HTTP(s) server you will need expertise in correlative analysis to diagnose the most tricky problems. There is no "plain text" or "open" mode of operation for DERP." https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/tree/main/cmd/derper https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/tree/main/cmd/derper Unclear why the company markets peer-to-peer networking but wants traffic going to their own third party servers In contrast, Nebula, another Go peer-to-peer project encourages peers to run their own rendezvous server ("lighthouse") https://github.com/slackhq/nebula https://github.com/slackhq/nebula "To set up a Nebula network, you'll need: 2. (Optional, but you really should..) At least one discovery node with a routable IP address, which we call a lighthouse." The comparison to nc seems off. Original netcat has no required third party dependencies, no recommended third party dependencies, and not enough complexity to be linked to a company selling associated SaaS or consulting

sfllaw 2mo ago
> Unclear why the company markets peer-to-peer networking but wants traffic going to their own third party servers At Tailscale, we do not _want_ traffic through our servers. What we do want is for Tailscale to Just Work without your needing to set up any infrastructure. That’s why we run the DERP relay network as a fallback of last resort, for when a direct connection is not possible. And the tailscaled client tries very hard to make that direct connection. If and only if you need to run your own infrastructure, then we provide peer relays which are significantly less onerous than running a DERP server: https://tailscale.com/docs/features/peer-relay https://tailscale.com/docs/features/peer-relay This note exists in the README because people would assume that hosting a DERP server was a hard requirement for using Tailscale. Or they would assume that an production Tailscale network would eventually operate a DERP server. People who run their own DERP servers usually have data sovereignty or strict metadata requirements.

sfllaw 2mo ago

> Unclear why the company markets peer-to-peer networking but wants traffic going to their own third party servers At Tailscale, we do not _want_ traffic through our servers. What we do want is for Tailscale to Just Work without your needing to set up any infrastructure. That’s why we run the DERP relay network as a fallback of last resort, for when a direct connection is not possible. And the tailscaled client tries very hard to make that direct connection. If and only if you need to run your own infrastructure, then we provide peer relays which are significantly less onerous than running a DERP server: https://tailscale.com/docs/features/peer-relay https://tailscale.com/docs/features/peer-relay This note exists in the README because people would assume that hosting a DERP server was a hard requirement for using Tailscale. Or they would assume that an production Tailscale network would eventually operate a DERP server. People who run their own DERP servers usually have data sovereignty or strict metadata requirements.