Tailcat – Like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane

cpuguy83

Interesting. I thought about doing this immediately after reading their old blog[1] post on punching through NAT some time ago. Just a combo of never getting around to it and friends talking me out of it b/c of existing alternatives such as wormhole[2]. [1] https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works [2] https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole

petcat

I did the homemade version of this for years just with SSH forwarding and nginx reverse proxy

gz5

i like that it removes tailscale proprietary. if that is goal then why not go 100% open source to eliminate the ts derp control as well and get full sovereignty? like netbird, openziti, zerotier, etc.

TZubiri

>"like netcat, but over Tailscale's data plane" Half of the Software offering nowadays seems to be selling vendor lock-in at no added value and then making a profit. Sure there's always some negligible added value, and then they reinvent a whole stack for their ecosystem. In the case of tailscale the added value seems to be avoiding going into your router and activating port forwarding? It looks like negative added value to me. Someone that tells you "don't do NAT traversal, just open a port" would be highly valuable, but saying no doesn't seem to be trendy, and is certainly not an easy sell.

codruterdei

A bit off topic: it’s just insane how I used to watch this guy’s http2 in Go yt video 10 years ago, and he’s still very relevant to this day! Cheers Brad!

archietect

It looks like a direct competitor for the recently launched bitbang-cli https://github.com/richlegrand/bitbang-cli

rugma

Wush was already doing something similar (using tailscale under the hood) https://github.com/coder/wush

MrDrMcCoy

Looks like a Wireguard stunnel replacement, which is very useful!

megamorf

So this is somewhat similar to Iroh? https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh

tptacek

This is smart. It's Magic Wormhole but for generalized connectivity, not just file transfer.

LoganDark

What's the risk of malware using this for C&C or otherwise? Hackers love communication channels that are difficult to take down individually.

mikepurvis

I enjoy that they supply a nix install/environment, similar to the main tailscale/tailscale repo. Is nix widespread or the standard dev environment at tailscale, or is it like a 10% option and most people just use Docker or whatever?

aseipp

Just yesterday I was complaining that I wanted to SSH back to my homenet while at the office, on my office (not home) tailnet. I wrote something based on Iroh to do this, but it's one shot (ie not particularly generalized). Might be able to throw it away or redesign it with some inspiration from this! Thanks.

1970-01-01

As 'cattail' is not officially taken, I have to assume they are oblivious to having a little fun.

pbohun

This is so cool! I mean, we really wouldn't need it if we had 100% ipv6 (no cgnat), but this is the next best thing. I think people underestimate the innovation that could happen if we had trivial p2p.

ipdashc

Looks dope, though I'm surprised, is Tailscale fine with their DERP servers being used by non-customers like this? (Yes, it's a Tailscale project, but doesn't require login.) I vaguely assumed there was an auth step before you could use one as a relay. They mention a rate limit, but still

mrsssnake

Tool like this exposes big problem with the current shape of the Internet, I believe. Everything should be possible with just plain netcat and IP stack. Someone asks about NAT holepunching, encryption, static IDs, permissions, etc., yes this is what Internet lacks and why every P2P app reinvents it over and over again.

bradfitz

One fun use case: a coworker just whipped up this Minecraft mod using tailcat as its transport: https://github.com/tailscale/tailcat-for-minecraft (just a cute demo, not intended for release or ongoing maintenance)

water-drummer

Woah this is cool! I've been making a mesh vpn like radmin vpn or hamachi that does not need a central authority server and most importantly, can run on all major OS thanks to wireguard-go.

spockz

How much Tailscale is this still if the transport is based on wireguard, the control plane is something new with the keys based on the wireguard keys? Genuinely confused.