Wireguard is super quick and easy to setup and use, I’d highly recommend to do that now. I don’t understand the recent obsession with Tailscale apart from bypassing cgNAT
Tailscale is an abstraction layer built on top of Wireguard. It handles things like assigning IP addresses, sharing public kegs, and building a mesh network without you having to do any manual work. People like easy solutions, which is why it’s popular.
To manually build a mesh with Wireguard, every node needs to have every other node listed as a peer in their config. I’ve done this manually before, or you could automate it (eg using Ansible or a tool specifically for Wireguard meshes). With Tailscale, you just log in using one of their client apps, and everything just works automatically.
I don’t think there’s any significant downsides. I suppose you are dependent on their infrastructure and uptime. If they ever go down, or for any reason stop offering their services, then you’re out of luck. But yeah that’s not significant.
The reason I want to do this is it gives me more control over the setup in case I ever wanted to customize it or the wireguard config, and also teaches me more in general, which will enable me to better debug.
I suppose you are dependent on their infrastructure and uptime
AFAIK their infra is only used for configuring the VPN. The VPN itself is a regular peer-to-peer Wireguard VPN. If their infra goes down while a VPN tunnel is connected, the tunnel should keep working. I’ve never tested that, though.
You can self-host your own Headscale server to avoid using their infra.
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I always redo it lol, which is kind of a waste but I enjoy it.
Maybe a related question is what I wish I could do if I had the time (which I will do eventually. Some I plan to do very soon):
Wireguard is super quick and easy to setup and use, I’d highly recommend to do that now. I don’t understand the recent obsession with Tailscale apart from bypassing cgNAT
Tailscale is an abstraction layer built on top of Wireguard. It handles things like assigning IP addresses, sharing public kegs, and building a mesh network without you having to do any manual work. People like easy solutions, which is why it’s popular.
To manually build a mesh with Wireguard, every node needs to have every other node listed as a peer in their config. I’ve done this manually before, or you could automate it (eg using Ansible or a tool specifically for Wireguard meshes). With Tailscale, you just log in using one of their client apps, and everything just works automatically.
What is the downside of using tailscale over wireguard?
I don’t think there’s any significant downsides. I suppose you are dependent on their infrastructure and uptime. If they ever go down, or for any reason stop offering their services, then you’re out of luck. But yeah that’s not significant.
The reason I want to do this is it gives me more control over the setup in case I ever wanted to customize it or the wireguard config, and also teaches me more in general, which will enable me to better debug.
AFAIK their infra is only used for configuring the VPN. The VPN itself is a regular peer-to-peer Wireguard VPN. If their infra goes down while a VPN tunnel is connected, the tunnel should keep working. I’ve never tested that, though.
You can self-host your own Headscale server to avoid using their infra.
You cam self-host a Headscale server, which is an open-source implementation of the Tailscale server. The Tailscale client apps can connect to it.