This is yet another amazing cherry-on-top of an amazing product. I switched Internet providers a couple months ago and was horrified to find that I was now behind a CGNAT. I went looking for a solution to reach my home lab on the go and found Tailscale. Tailscale solved that issue - and I actually had the epiphany that if I couldn't reach my home network without it then nobody else could either. So, maybe the CGNAT is actually a big security benefit in that way - but I digress.

I originally was thinking of it like a network-level VPN but realised if I installed it on everything individually it would give me DNS and HTTPS certs for all the machines in my home lab - that work from anywhere as long as my laptop was connected to Tailscale. That is something I always wanted to do with let's encrypt but never got around to. And now this!

It has really inspired my imagination. I've been running labs teaching 5-15 people k8s and k8s security out of AWS but this means I might be able to just run a bunch of VMs in my home lab all with Tailscale loaded and point people easily at them all. Maybe with code-server (VS code in a browser) on them to give them a browser-based terminal. And that is just one possible usecase...

Thank you Tailscale people - it is such a great product that has exceeded all my expectations!