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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]
Tailscale | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Tailscale Inc. |
Stable release | 1.82.5[5]
/ April 17, 2025 |
Repository | github |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, tvOS, Plan9 |
Type | SD-WAN, P2P, VPN, ZTNA |
License | BSD |
Website | tailscale |
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]
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]
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.
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