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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49454785

> Even more ironic is that NAT got normalized as a security feature — “your devices are hidden!” — which is one of the things that made people resist the thing that would fix it.

That tracks. I briefly looked into the Tailscale website and I thought maybe I was wrong, maybe it's not a NAT/ddns toolchain, maybe it's something more complex that I'm too dumb to understand. But if my thesis that it's NATware is right, it makes sense to market it as a security product, it fooled me for one, but it also passes as a quality product for an organization, and they feel they are getting a security product when they are actually signing the purchase request of a developer that is applying networking techniques they learned from managing a videogame server.

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rcxdude 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

The fact that it's a VPN is also pretty important, despite the utility of it also dealing with NAT headaches for you.

The main selling point is acting as a relatively efficient private overlay network, giving you a consistent private network even as devices move between different internet connections. (Something that NAT makes a bit harder but you don't get for free even if NAT isn't a factor)

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wmf 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm having trouble decoding this but Tailscale is a VPN that can traverse NAT when necessary. Arguably Tailscale wouldn't be needed if NAT didn't exist but considering the timeline I'm not going to declare a conflict of interest.

	▲	TZubiri 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You are describing the product technically, but I find how it is used more important. Do you use it? What do you use it for? If empirically most users use it to host a server on a machine with firewalled IP, then that's more descriptive than its technical featureset as listed on the tin.

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jochem9 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm using tailscale to tunnel from an hetzner vm to my home, so that the vm can use my home connection for certain traffic. Traverses NAT and GNAT.

It just works: connect devices and they immediately show up in their portal. Most config is just clicking, but more advanced things can be configured as well. Definitely feels like a high quality product, not just something thrown together by a developer that learned a few network techniques.

	▲	TZubiri 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>"that the vm can use my home connection for certain traffic. " Huh. Why are you doing this, is the datacenter IP being (rightfully) blocked by some service to avoid abuse? Is your usecase breaking some services ToS? Certainly adding more fire to the "never a GOOD reason to use this" thesis