Tailscale
Software company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.[a][2][3] The company provides a zero config VPN as a service under the same name.[4][better source needed]
| Developer(s) | Tailscale Inc. |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 1.82.5[5]
/ April 17, 2025 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, tvOS, Plan9 |
| Type | SD-WAN, P2P, VPN, ZTNA |
| License | BSD |
| Website | tailscale |
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | |
| Founded | 2019 |
| Founder | Avery Pennarun David Carney Brad Fitzpatrick |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario |
Key people |
|
| Website | tailscale |
History
Founded in 2019 by Google engineers Avery Pennarun, David Crawshaw, David Carney, and Brad Fitzpatrick,[6] 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.[7] In May 2022, the company secured a $100 million Series B round, led by CRV and Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors.[6][8]
The company's name is inspired from a research paper The Tail at Scale[b] published by Google.[9]
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.[10][11] 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.[12] 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.[13] The IPv4 addresses given to clients are in the carrier-grade NAT reserved space. This was chosen to avoid interference with existing networks.[14] The Linux client can also send traffic to networks behind itself by disabling SNAT and routing directly to the source IPs. [15]
Supported platforms
The Tailscale client software supports a number of operating systems and embedded software systems,[16] including:
A Kubernetes operator[19] and Docker images[20] are also available.
See also
Notes
- 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]
- Dean, Jeffrey; André Barroso, Luiz. "The Tail at Scale". Google. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
References
External links
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