Tailscale instead of port forwarding
Reach a home NAS, Pi or Minecraft server without opening a router port. How Tailscale gets through NAT, when it falls back to a relay, and what it cannot do.
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Is Tailscale a VPN? What it hides and doesn't
Tailscale is a WireGuard VPN between your own devices. It does not hide your IP from websites or your ISP until you add an exit node. What each setup hides.
Why Tailscale is slow: relay vs direct
Relayed Tailscale is slow, direct is close to line rate. Two commands tell you which you have, plus the blocked UDP and hard NAT fixes for a VPS.
Pair a storage VPS with your main VPS
Run the app on a fast small VPS and keep the terabytes on a cheap storage VPS. Join them with NFS, SSHFS or rclone over WireGuard, and survive a lost mount.
Tailscale alternatives compared: 6 real options
NetBird, ZeroTier, Nebula, Netmaker, Headscale and Twingate, sorted by whether you can really self-host the control plane, and what breaks when you do.
WireGuard slow speeds: find the real cause
Slow WireGuard is usually an MTU problem. Find your path MTU by bisection, clamp TCP MSS, check steal time, and measure the path before blaming the tunnel.
WireGuard: route to your home LAN
Your WireGuard handshake works but no host on the home LAN answers. Four settings decide whether a packet reaches 192.168.20.10 and finds its way back.
How WireGuard works: cryptokey routing
AllowedIPs is the routing table and the access list at once. Learn cryptokey routing, the Noise handshake and rotation, and every wg0.conf reads clearly.
Is Tailscale secure? The trust model
Tailscale never holds the keys that encrypt your traffic. The real question is what a compromised coordination server or a stolen identity account can do.
What is Tailscale and how does it work?
Tailscale explained: WireGuard tunnels between your servers, a coordination server for keys and ACLs, NAT traversal, DERP relays, and the threat model.
Self-host the NetBird VPN server on a VPS
Run the NetBird mesh VPN on one VPS: DNS and TLS setup, the pinned quickstart script, setup keys for unattended peers, and how it compares to Headscale.
Run a Tailscale subnet router on a VPS
Advertise a private network to your tailnet from a VPS: route approval, IP forwarding that survives a reboot, and the --accept-routes flag Linux needs.
Use your VPS as a Tailscale exit node
Turn your VPS into a Tailscale exit node: install, advertise, enable IP forwarding, approve the route in the admin console, then fix DNS and IPv6.
Route Docker containers through a VPN
Put a container behind a Gluetun sidecar and its ports vanish. Here is why the shared network namespace does that, and the compose file that works.
Headscale: self-host your own Tailscale
Run your own Tailscale control server on a VPS. Install headscale from the official .deb, set server_url before you start it, then join your first node.
wg-easy: WireGuard with a web UI in Docker
Run WireGuard behind the wg-easy web UI with Docker Compose: the ports, NET_ADMIN, the sysctls that matter, and QR code onboarding for phones.
Fix DNS over WireGuard: three failure modes
Your WireGuard tunnel is up but names do not resolve, or the queries leak to the local router. Find which of the three DNS failures you have, and fix it.
WireGuard vs Tailscale vs Headscale
Tailscale is WireGuard plus a control plane. What that coordination server buys you, what it costs you, and which of the three belongs on your VPS.
WireGuard vs OpenVPN: which to self-host
WireGuard wins for almost every self hoster on speed, config size and audit surface. Here is the evidence, and the four cases where OpenVPN still wins.
Self-host a WireGuard VPN on your VPS
Set up WireGuard on your own Linux VPS: key generation, wg0.conf, IP forwarding, NAT, AllowedIPs semantics, DNS, and the handshake failures that bite.