ZeroTier VS tailscale

Tailscale uses Go https://tailscale.com/security#tailscale-is-written-in-go which might explain the larger sizes.

A cursory look through https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne shows more C++ and some Rust. Not sure how much static linking is involved here.

ZeroTier - Layer 2 overlay network. They take decentralization seriously, and like to say "decentralize until it hurts, then centralize until it works." Written in C++.

EDIT - I'm tired and cross-eyed after a bunch of internet searching and rabbit holes... A supposed ZeroTier dev said on April 25, 2023 that this would be addressed in a future release of the app in this thread: https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne/issues/1952. On August 10th, another engineer said that they are waiting for a car to be delivered.

Solution 2: Wait for support from Zerotier-One with DBUS

A Smart Ethernet Switch for Earth

https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne (11.5k stars)

If you just want to connect between your devices, you don't need any hardware. Just install zerotier on them.

TailScale

I recently found out about Tailscale from the Level1Tech's interview with its founder. After trying it out, I can say that I am more than satisfied with its performance, ease of use, and ability to network all of my devices together across different intranets.

One note about VPN, there is a way to get into your network without opening a port. You can use https://tailscale.com/ to open a tunnel to your network and access it with better security. However, using Tailscale doesn’t work with all use cases. In this blog post, I go over how to automatically sync your public IP with Cloudflare and always have your Dynamic DNS domain point to the correct IP address.

The other day I noticed the similarities between Tailscale and MUBI — not the companies, of course, but their logos! It also reminded me of a position control I once created. Subconsciously, this must have triggered something, because I woke up today wanting to code a “Scroll Grid.”

See https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/11717#issuecom...

> Because, for whatever reason I’ve yet to grasp, homelab folks like to implement Tailscale as some sort of “secure virtual network” abstraction layer - think something similar to zScaler ZPA - on top of their local LAN.

This is Tailscale's intended behavior, not how homelab folks like to implement it: https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/659#issuecomme...

They started that for a number of countries during 30.08-01.09 2023 [0][1]

[0] https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/issues/9158

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Tailscale/comments/1672n6k/

> VPN as a service sounds wrong from security perspective, as you are giving away all the keys.

Tailscale’s Android and Linux clients are open-source[0] and based on WireGuard (which AFAIU is now part of the Linux kernel[1]). With other VPN software you may be owning the keys but you cannot verify what the program does.

Tailscale requires a coordination server to function. This component is not open-source, but there is an open-source reimplementation called Headscale[2] that you can host on your own server.

Additionally, there is "tailnet lock"[3]:

> Tailnet lock lets you verify that no node is added to your tailnet without being signed by trusted nodes in your tailnet. When tailnet lock is enabled, even if Tailscale infrastructure is malicious or hacked, attackers can’t send or receive traffic on your tailnet.

---

> These internal services that are annohnced are just... Services you can run on the Internet with TLS.

I haven’t used Tailscale in a professional context, so I cannot comment on the usefulness there, but I am using it (with Headscale) in my homelab. It makes it very easy to access all the services spread onto multiple boxes from everywhere, let them all use the same AdGuard Home DNS server without having to configure them individually and tunnel all my traffic through my home internet connection using an exit node[4].

I normally use croc[5] for file transfers between boxes, but when I had to fetch some files from my Windows game streaming computer, it was easier to just use Taildrop because Tailscale was installed already.

[0] https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale

BTW, that code changed just recently:

https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/commit/1c972bc7cbebfc...

It's now a AF_PACKET/SOCK_DGRAM fd as it was originally meant to be.