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Comment by MasterYoda | Hacker News Reader

Is there any simple FOSS alternative to tailscale that you can self-host?

The only thing I need is to simply connect to the home network and I dont want to need to open and forward ports etc in routers and firewalls for it to work, just something simple plug and play and is secure.

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Yes - https://headscale.net/

Fully compatible with Tailscale client binaries; it just replaces the control server.

> The only thing I need is to simply connect to the home network and I dont want to need to open and forward ports etc in routers and firewalls for it to work, just something simple plug and play and is secure

That's tailscale, basically. Install on devices and they can magically talk to each other across the internet with no other configuration.

If you really want to, you can run headscale and manage the coordination plane yourself as well.

https://github.com/juanfont/headscale

It's functionally just a VPN. Selfhosting wireguard or openvpn is not particularly difficult.

It uses Wireguard, sure, but it's using a coordination service to give you a effectively a flat network mesh instead of hub and spoke.

No it's not the same as normal wireguard with some 'just works' config sauce. Devices can connect directly and also find the best way to do it. For example two devices in the same office will create a direct path between them without having to go through the off-site vpn server.

At this mesh vpn is really good.

I know it's not just wireguard. That's why I said it's 'functionally' just a VPN. For the average user, it provides VPN-like functionality

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