awesome-tunneling VS tinc

https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

awesome-tunneling lists a number of ngrok alternatives: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39754786

- FWIU headscale works with the tailscale client and supports MagicDNS

There are a whole bunch of alternatives too - https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling. I will advocate for zrok.io as I work on its parent project, OpenZiti. zrok is open source and has a free SaaS as well as more built in security.

https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling. Seems similar to zrok.io, ngrok, cloudflare tunnels, tailscale funnels and zrok although you're using http/3 explicitly.

Personally I work on two similar projects you might want to check out: zrok and OpenZiti. Similar projects, but zrok is closest to what you did here.

Thanks for the history. I maintain this list[0], and wasn't aware of OG localtunnel, likely because there's a somewhat newer and now more popular project with the same name[1]. You appear to be correct on timing. Here's the earliest commits on GitHub for each of the projects:

OG localtunnel (2010): https://github.com/progrium/localtunnel/tree/fb82920d9d3e538...

Other localtunnel (2012): https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel/tree/93d62b9dbb9f...

ngrok (2012): https://github.com/inconshreveable/ngrok/tree/8f4795ecac7f92...

I'll see that OG localtunnel gets added to the list for posterity.

[0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

[1]: https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel

I haven't tried vscode forwarding. What features does it have that are missing from most of the options on the list[0]?

If you want a nice GUI for remote managing maybe check out one of my tools, boringproxy

[0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

I maintain this list:

https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

Your use case sounds interesting and there may be a tool out there that will do it, but I can't quite wrap my head around your description of how everything is connected and what runs where with your current setup.

I agree with sibling that my main question is what prevents you from using SSHFS or similar?

I'm starting to try to get into Cloudflare tunnel, Tailscale funnel and other alternatives. What I need is my services to be accessible without any installation client-side, and I'm unsure what services provide this. I also looked at solutions like BoringProxy, TunnelMole from this page : https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling My goal is to have my current domain rented at OVH pointing to my server to make it as much like before as possible.

Here's a list of options to get around CGNAT: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

We have a section for overlay networks on the tunneling list[0] I maintain. This is a very interesting space with some excellent software.

I certainly have my gripes about the closed nature of Slack itself, in particular using a closed protocol when the model is clearly "federated" between multiple servers internally. That said, the contribution of something on the scale and quality of Nebula back to the open source community is hard to argue with.

[0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling#overlay-ne...

But both Nebula and tinc max out at around 1 Gbit/s on my Hetzner servers, thus not using most of my 10 Gbit/s connectivity. This is because they cap out at 100% of 1 CPU. The Nebula issue about that was closed due to "inactivity" [2].

I also observed that when Nebula operates at 100% CPU usage, you get lots of package loss. This causes software that expects reasonable timings on ~0.2ms links to fail (e.g. consensus software like Consul, or Ceph). This in turn led to flakiness / intermittent outages.

I had to resolve to move the big data pushing softwares like Ceph outside of the VPN to get 10 Gbit/s speed for those, and to avoid downtimes due to the packet loss.

Such software like Ceph has its own encryption, but I don't trust it, and that mistrust was recently proven right again [3].

So I'm currently looking to move the Ceph into WireGuard.

Summary: For small-data use, tinc and Nebula are fine, but if you start to push real data, they break.

[1]: https://github.com/gsliepen/tinc/issues/218

[2]: https://github.com/slackhq/nebula/issues/637

[3]: https://github.com/google/security-research/security/advisor...

From a purely networking perspective, there are far better solutions than tailscale.

Have a look at full mesh VPNs like:

https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

https://github.com/yggdrasil-network/yggdrasil-go

https://github.com/gsliepen/tinc

https://github.com/costela/wesher

These build actual mesh networks where every node is equal and can serve as a router for other nodes to resolve difficult network topologies (where some nodes might not be connected to the internet, but do have connections to other nodes with an internet connection).

Sending data through multiple routers is also possible. They also deal with nodes disappearing and change routes accordingly.

tailscale (and similar solutions like netbird) still use a bunch of "proxy servers" for that. You can set them up on intermediate nodes, but that have to be dealt with manually (and you get two kinds of nodes).

Two other options are Tinc https://tinc-vpn.org/ or Nebula https://www.defined.net/nebula/

And there is Tinc; the OG overlay network. I don't have experience with this. Seemed a bit of a pain to setup. https://tinc-vpn.org

For what its worth I have used the open source Tinc VPN [1] for mesh multihop routing for ages. It is nowhere near as fast as Wireguard but I could envision Tinc incorporating support for Wireguard if the author were so inclined. Like you mentioned Tinc does not mesh with other VPN's AFAIK.

[1] - https://tinc-vpn.org/

This is actually very simple in concept and is just as simple or even simpler to do with tinc (https://tinc-vpn.org).

Since I can use tinc in bridge mode, I can run tinc on the upstream server and on a local machine which then provides access to several physical machines without running extra software on each of those machines, which is particularly useful for machines that are resource limited, like my Macintosh LC II and LC III+:

http://elsie.zia.io/

It'd be nice if it weren't so difficult to get public addresses.

I clicked expected some broken analogy between https://tinc-vpn.org/ and the Catan board game, but instead it is a Catan implementation. Fair enough.

will generate a real-time network graph using the Graphviz DOT language. It's a cool feature that I find quite useful.

[0] https://tinc-vpn.org/