What is tailscale doing, exactly? They bill themselves as a VPN, but honestly I'...

barkingcat · on July 2, 2022

Tailscale provides a virtual private network (VPN) - in the old school definition - the network is private to your own devices/network.

You use it to connect your home network for example, on your laptop when you are out and about.

Any internet routing is purely done by your own isp provider (if you chose to tunnel internet traffic through tailscale)

Behind the scenes, it uses WireGuard which provides the vpn tunnel to your own network.

Tailscale also provides an authentication layer (ie username/login/passwords)

mkl · on July 2, 2022

> Tailscale also provides an authentication layer (ie username/login/passwords)

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I don't think it does (having to use a a third party to sign in is one of the main reasons I haven't tried it yet). From https://tailscale.com/kb/1013/sso-providers/: "Tailscale never handles authentication itself."

thejosh · on July 2, 2022

Wireguard isn't a chatty protocol, and uses very minimal. You can use it on a spotty connection and your internet will go through that.

tomrod · on July 2, 2022

Thanks!