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Comment by jchw

7 hours ago

I'm definitely not trying to dissuade anyone from using Cloudflare, just making sure people realize the potential privacy implications of doing so. It isn't always obvious, even though some of the features pretty much require it (at least to be handled entirely on Cloudflare's side. You could implement similar features that are split between the endpoint and the coordination server without requiring full TLS stripping. Maybe Tailscale will support some of those as features of the `serve` server?)

> client-less access

JFYI, Tailscale Funnels also work for this, though depending on your use case it may not be ideal. Ultimately, Cloudflare does handle this use case a bit better.

Tailscale funnels do work, but it's public only. No auth.

  • Yeah, because the auth can't be done on Tailscale's end if they don't terminate the TLS connection. However, it is still possible to use an authentication proxy in this situation. Many homelab and small to medium size company setups use OAuth2 Proxy, often with Dex. If you wanted to get fancier, you could use Tailscale for identity when behind the firewall and OAuth2 Proxy when outside the firewall.

    This may seem like a lot of effort and it is definitely not nothing, but Cloudflare Tunnels also has a decent number of moving parts and frankly their authentication gateway leaves a bit to be desired for home users.