I'm curious what kind of a use case you can think of that "traditional wireguard" can't replace tailscale for.

Tailscale has a maximum of 3 users on their free tier, so it seems like a super limited use case of people who DIY their own servers for Jellyfin or HomAssistant or whatever, but just a tad too lazy to setup their own Wireguard service in addition to whatever it is they'd be using it for... I think the vast majority of free tailscale users have simply never actually tried wg-easy , because if they did they wouldnt need to use a third party service.

I think ACL is a paid feature with TS, but maybe im wrong. Once you get to the paid tier, you are just paying someone else to manage your VPN, which is fair enough but its not something you could't also pay someone to do with wireguard (or openVPN for that matter). I think its fair to say "I pay for this service because i don't want to have to deal with configuring it myself", it might be easier to setup for some use cases, but if someone is already self-hosting things and has a DIY attitude to it, I don't think tailscale can do anything wireguard can't also do (it is based on WG afterall)

Maybe I'm not familiar enough with other kinds of setups to think of things though. My wireguard setup is basically a meshnet between several people's home servers, each person has their own subnet only they can use, but the wider 10.X.X.X is shared by everyone, its certainly not the most secure because it doesnt need to be, but if i wanted to restrict one persons access to something i certainly could do that.

Not what I said. I in fact said the specific company doesn’t matter because all VC money seeks to make more money and the easiest way to do that is parasitically jacking up costs to customers every quarter no matter what until the company collapses. Then rinse and repeat, making money each time. Does this screw people over? Absolutely. Are there legal consequences? Nope, so they can do it as many times as they want, forever

Is there an actual example you can provide of Accel doing that

So... if all VC money does, then you can provide an example of Accel doing this... right? So, go ahead and do that now.

What you’re apparently not getting is that even if it’s not happening right now, it will in the end. What they happen to be doing or not doing right now doesn’t matter. Look at the rules of the system

Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth

Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).

“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”

Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.

Am I totally off-base in thinking that MagicDNS and pluggable DNS nameserver overrides are a huge feature of tailscale?

I love that I can refer to my tailnet devices just via their machine name. I use it everywhere. And also that I can just slot in my NextDNS ID so that any device running tailscale now automatically uses that, and I don’t have to mess with my shared router settings or per device settings. Is all that actually really easy to set up outside of tailscale? Cuz if it is and I just somehow missed that when doing all my research, I’ll happily give plain wireguard or other mesh orchestrators like NetBird a go.

And I already know that mDNS is not the answer. That protocol is simply not reliable enough.

Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth

Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).

“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”

Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.

Tailscale never sat right with me. The convenience was nice, but - like other VC-funded projects - it followed that ever-familiar pattern of an "easy" service popping up out of nowhere and gaining massive popularity seemingly overnight.

I can't say I'm surprised by any of this.

Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth

Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).

“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”

Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.

WG is worthless in a CGNAT environment... And as we are in 2025 and time doesn't stop it will be irrelevant for everyone someday, unless they fully support IPv6 (which I don't know if they do, if you can use WG in a CGNATED network with IPv6 I'd like to know though, I am very rusty setting it up, but it might worth checking it out).

Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO

You know what's to come.

The answer to the question is immediately. Or switch to OpenZiti or Pangolin even.

Am I totally off-base in thinking that MagicDNS and pluggable DNS nameserver overrides are a huge feature of tailscale?

I love that I can refer to my tailnet devices just via their machine name. I use it everywhere. And also that I can just slot in my NextDNS ID so that any device running tailscale now automatically uses that, and I don’t have to mess with my shared router settings or per device settings. Is all that actually really easy to set up outside of tailscale? Cuz if it is and I just somehow missed that when doing all my research, I’ll happily give plain wireguard or other mesh orchestrators like NetBird a go.

And I already know that mDNS is not the answer. That protocol is simply not reliable enough.

So, I don't run the arr stack, or any of it''s components. In fact, I've never even test run Plex. However, I hear that Emby is a better replacement coupled with Symfonium to take the place of PlexAmp. That seems to be the 'next horse' everyone is switching to, even tho Emby does seem to have some unresolved issues.

I just find the constant grind against profitability and capitalism to be a bit worn. I guess you could say I am fully ensconced in capitalism as I run three tax paying, for profit businesses. The issues I take with capitalism is unbridled, uncontrolled greed...when we place profit over principal. By all means tho, make yo' paper son.

These are my opinions. There are many like them, but these ones are mine.

ME: So, even if Accel doesn't do that, which they haven't done that, they are still guilty of doing that.

YOU: Not what I said.

YOU: What you’re apparently not getting is that even if it’s not happening right now, it will in the end.

So.. even if Accel doesn't do that, which they haven't done that, they are still guilty of doing that. You have no argument, just strong feelings.

a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed

Switch to self-hosting headscale when they enshittify in an attempt to become profitable, duh

I mainly use Tailscale (and Zerotier) to access my CGNATED LAN, headscale will require me to pay a subscription for a VPS wouldn't it?

I really envy the guys who say only use them because they're lazy to open ports or want a more secure approach, I use them because I NEED them lol.

If (when?) Tailscale enshitify I'll stick with ZT a bit until it goes the same way lol, I started using it 1st, I don't know if ZT came before Tailscale though.

Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth

Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).

“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”

Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.

Corporate VPN startup Tailscale secures $230 million CAD Series C on back of “surprising” growth

Pennarun confirmed the company had been approached by potential acquirers, but told BetaKit that the company intends to grow as a private company and work towards an initial public offering (IPO).

“Tailscale intends to remain independent and we are on a likely IPO track, although any IPO is several years out,” Pennarun said. “Meanwhile, we have an extremely efficient business model, rapid revenue acceleration, and a long runway that allows us to become profitable when needed, which means we can weather all kinds of economic storms.”

Keep that in mind as you ponder whether and when to switch to self-hosting Headscale.

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