So I’m just being introduced to the concept of using a VPN or something like Tailscale to access one’s services, instead of opening the services directly to the web, but I’m thinking for streaming purposes or just accessing your services on the run, isn’t it an annoyance having to connect to your home network all the time? Or do you keep the VPN running on your phone for example? What if you use a VPN provider for privacy purposes, wouldn’t one need to then switch VPN connection?
I think it’s very important to separate a random “VPN” solution to using Tailscale.
Focusing on Tailscale. Who turns off Tailscale? It is “directly” connecting to your service or app or whatever. That’s the whole point.
Probably just me that’s confused. I thought Tailscale was similar to WireGuard but much easier to set up. So one connects to the services directly, and not just the general home network (like a VPN) where you then enter whatever address you need to access the service?
Tailscale is wireguard (it uses the wireguard protocols, even says so on the box), just with a centralized resolver to make things easier to setup and manage.
I’m not sure what you’re saying with the rest of your comment, as Tailscale is a mesh network, not a VPN as most people think of it.
It encrypts your traffic, but only into the network of which your device is a member. You can’t even see any devices, or networking, outside the Tailscale network, unless a device is configured as a Subnet router. Then you can see devices in the network which the Subnet Router links together.
For example, you have 3 machines, a laptop on mobile data, and 2 desktops on your home LAN. One desktop and the laptop have Tailscale, they can communicate over Tailscale to each other, but the laptop cannot connect to the second desktop because it’s on a different network, since there’s no routing between Tailscale and your home LAN.
You then configure Subnet Routing on the desktop that has Tailscale, now your laptop can connect o any device on the home LAN, so long as the desktop is running and Tailscale is up.
Think of mesh networks as Virtual LANs in software, configurable on each device (mostly, sort of). Twenty years ago Hamachi was the go-to for this, it was brilliant, and much easier to use than today’s mesh networks, just far less capable/manageable/configurable.
Great explanation, thank you! Hamachi brings back memories haha
It still exists! (Or did about a year ago).
When I got my first Android (2009 ish), I searched high and low for a way to run Hamachi on it. There have been solutions, but always clumsy and difficult to implement.
I miss Hamachi, it was so simple to use.
It can be just like you’ve said. You can also run tailscale directly on the system hosting a service and access it directly over the tailscale network.