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Tailscale
Software company

Tailscale Inc. is a software company based in Toronto, Ontario. Tailscale develops a partially open-source software-defined mesh virtual private network (VPN) and a web-based management service. The company provides a zero config VPN as a service under the same name.[better source needed]

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History

Founded in 2019 by Google engineers Avery Pennarun, David Crawshaw, David Carney, and Brad Fitzpatrick,5 the company secured funding of $12 million in a Series A round in November 2020 led by Accel with seed investors, Heavybit and Uncork Capital participating.6 In May 2022, the company became a unicorn, raising a $100 million Series B round, led by CRV and Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors.78

The company's name is inspired from a research paper The Tail at Scale9 published by Google.10

Software

The open-source software acts in combination with the management service to establish peer-to-peer or relayed VPN communication with other clients using the WireGuard protocol.1112 Tailscale can open direct connection to the peer using NAT traversal techniques such as STUN or request port forwarding via UPnP IGD, NAT-PMP or PCP.13 If the software fails to establish direct communication it falls back to using DERP (Designated Encrypted Relay for Packets) protocol relays provided by the company.14 The IPv4 addresses given to clients are in the carrier-grade NAT reserved space. This was chosen to avoid interference with existing networks.15 The Linux client can also send traffic to networks behind itself by disabling SNAT and routing directly to the source IPs. 16

Supported platforms

The Tailscale client software supports a number of operating systems and embedded software systems,17 including:

A Kubernetes operator20 and Docker images21 are also available.

See also

Notes

References

  1. Although Tailscale provides VPN software & services, it should not be confused to be what is commonly referred to as a VPN service, however Tailscale's software can be integrated with the Mullvad VPN service[1] /wiki/VPN_service ↩

  2. Rogers, Sarah (2021-09-09). "Tailscale VPN review". TechRadar. Archived from the original on 19 September 2021. Retrieved 2022-04-13. https://archive.today/20210919020433/https://www.techradar.com/reviews/tailscale-vpn ↩

  3. Vaughan-Nichols, Steven. "Tailscale launches Wireguard-secured mesh network". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 2022-04-13. https://archive.today/20230223175120/https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/tailscale-launches-wireguard-secured-mesh-network/ ↩

  4. Hanselman, Scott. "Using Tailscale on Windows to network more easily with WSL2 and Visual Studio Code". www.hanselman.com. Archived from the original on 2014-08-09. Retrieved 2021-02-01. https://www.hanselman.com/blog/using-tailscale-on-windows-to-network-more-easily-with-wsl2-and-visual-studio-code ↩

  5. Kyle, Wiggers (5 May 2022). "Tailscale lands $100 million to 'transform' enterprise VPNs with mesh technology". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. https://archive.today/20230223174332/https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/04/tailscale-lands-100-million-to-transform-enterprise-vpns-with-mesh-technology/ ↩

  6. Dillet, Romain (10 November 2020). "Tailscale raises $12 million for its WireGuard-based corporate VPN". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 2021-02-01. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/10/tailscale-raises-12-million-for-its-wireguard-based-corporate-vpn/ ↩

  7. Kyle, Wiggers (5 May 2022). "Tailscale lands $100 million to 'transform' enterprise VPNs with mesh technology". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. https://archive.today/20230223174332/https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/04/tailscale-lands-100-million-to-transform-enterprise-vpns-with-mesh-technology/ ↩

  8. Tailscale (4 May 2022). "Tailscale raises $100M… to fix the Internet". Tailscale. Archived from the original on 6 May 2022. Retrieved 2022-05-05. https://archive.today/20220506052045/https://tailscale.com/blog/series-b/ ↩

  9. Dean, Jeffrey; André Barroso, Luiz. "The Tail at Scale". Google. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 9 March 2021. https://archive.today/20211214150610/https://research.google/pubs/pub40801/ ↩

  10. Security Cryptography Whatever: Tailscale with Avery Pennarun & Brad Fitzpatrick. 15 Jan 2022. Event occurs at 45m53s. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 23 February 2023 – via archive.org.{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) https://web.archive.org/web/20230223185357/https://www.buzzsprout.com/1822302/9890092-tailscale-with-avery-pennarun-brad-fitzpatrick ↩

  11. Morgan, Ethel. "Tailscale". ethulhu.co.uk. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 2021-02-01. https://archive.today/20230223174752/https://ethulhu.co.uk/tailscale ↩

  12. "What is Tailscale? · Tailscale Docs". Tailscale. Retrieved 2024-08-17. https://tailscale.com/kb/1151/what-is-tailscale ↩

  13. "Troubleshooting device connectivity · Tailscale Docs". Tailscale. Retrieved 2024-08-17. https://tailscale.com/kb/1411/device-connectivity ↩

  14. "Terminology and concepts · Tailscale Docs". Tailscale. Retrieved 2024-08-17. https://tailscale.com/kb/1155/terminology-and-concepts#relay ↩

  15. "IP pool · Tailscale Docs". Tailscale. Retrieved 2024-08-17. https://tailscale.com/kb/1304/ip-pool ↩

  16. "Disable SNAT · Tailscale Docs". Tailscale. Retrieved 2025-03-15. https://tailscale.com/kb/1019/subnets?tab=linux#disable-snat ↩

  17. "Download · Tailscale". tailscale.com. Retrieved 2024-03-07. https://tailscale.com/download ↩

  18. Tailscale. "Access Synology NAS from anywhere". Tailscale. Retrieved 2024-03-07. https://tailscale.com/kb/1131/synology/ ↩

  19. "QNAP". tailscale.com. Retrieved 2024-03-07. https://tailscale.com/qnap ↩

  20. Tailscale. "Kubernetes operator". Tailscale. Retrieved 2024-03-07. https://tailscale.com/kb/1236/kubernetes-operator/ ↩

  21. "Contain your excitement: A deep dive into using Tailscale with Docker". tailscale.com. Retrieved 2024-03-07. https://tailscale.com/blog/docker-tailscale-guide ↩