Comment by Tor3
1 month ago
How does it compare to Zerotier? The way I understand it it's kind of overlapping functionality but not necessarily everything. What I want from Zerotier is basically what you described about Tailscale.
The two problems I have with zerotier are:
1) It's supposed to let a mobile device like an Android tablet route its traffic through zerotier (functioning as a VPN to my home site, in this case). However, I've never got that to work. It's running, but doesn't affect anything network-wise for the other applications (unlike running e.g. openvpn on it)
2) On a couple of computers with specific routing set up to various destinations, when Zerotier runs it simply blocks all of that and there's no way for me to continue accessing anything else than the Zerotier network. No fiddling with routing tables etc. changes any of that. On other computers, also some running OpenVPN, Zerotier does not interfere. I've never figured out what causes this.
So, in short, I'm pondering if I should ditch Zerotier and try Tailscale instead. If it does the same - I simply want a way to connect my devices, but I also don't want to lose total control over routing. For mobile devices I would want full VPN, for computers I don't. Edit: So, I'm both after connecting my multiple networks, as well as VPN'ing certain things or devices through another location.
Thanks for any input on this.
Having tried both Zerotier and Tailscale, I found Tailscale to be a significant improvement. Tailscale uses Wireguard as the base encrypted protocol instead of a semi-homebrew protocol Zerotier came up with that notably lacks things like ephemeral keys/perfect forward secrecy. Tailscale also has a faster pace of improvement and is responsive to customer asks, regularly rolling out new features, improving performance, or fixing bugs. Zerotier by contrast seems to move slower, regularly promising improvements for years that never materialize (e.g. fixing the lack of PFS).
My last gripe is more niche, but I found Zerotier's single threaded performance to be abysmal, making it basically unusable for small single core VMs. My searching at the time suggested this was a known bug, but not one that was fixed before I switched to Tailscale. Not impossible to work around, but also the kind of issue that didn't endear the product to me or inspire confidence.
It's been a minute since I ran ZeroTier, so my memory is fuzzy.
Tailscale and ZT are not the same. ZT can do certain things that TS can't. One example is acting as a layer 2 bridge. Or a layer 3 bridge. TS can do neither. It can achieve mostly similar results though.
ZT can be a pain to setup. TS is a breeze. ZT's raw performance is quite poor. TS's is usually very good.
If I understood you correctly, you want both a way to access your home LAN when you're out - this is easy. Set up a node with NICs on the LAN subnets you want access to (I run it on my router), and configure the TS node to announce routes to those subnets. Install the TS client on your laptop and mobile and accept those routes. Job done.
If you also want to mask your egress - i.e. reach the Internet via your home network as if you were there - then you need a node (can be the same as above) configured to act as an Exit Node. When you want one of your devices to use this, just select the appropriate exit node. Job done.