I’ve been playing around with self hosting for file sharing, backups, and a handful of other ideas I might one day get round to. I like the idea of a mesh VPN and being able to, for example, connect a travelling laptop to a ‘host’ laptop nearby, though my only public ip is a VPS in another country.

Of all the options I found, I liked the look of Nebula most. Fiddly in some places, but it’s working nicely for me, and I appreciate some of the simplicity of design.

I’m wondering if people here have much experience of it, though? My biggest concern is over its future. With,

  1. The Defined Networking site focusing on making money off it, and
  2. The Android app doesn’t allow full configuration (including the firewall, so I can’t host a website from a phone) but - I heard - does if you use Defined Networking’s paid service for configuration,

makes me worry they might be essentially trying to deprecate viable FOSS Nebula in favour of a paid or controlled service.

Any thoughts? Insight?

  • paperdEnglish
    2·
    10 days ago

    I think nebula is really cool and am heavily considering it in production.

    Having a paid-for service that makes things easier is a good way to keep money going into the project, I think. And it feels a lot safer in terms of rug pull than tailscale/headscale. The android apps not being in fdroid and have some other limitations sucks… but I feel like those are easier to solve than some other issues that could be there.

    If you want tailscale, but not tailscale, check out netbird. You can self host the auth server and it isn’t some side project, the whole auth server is open.

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.eeOPEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      I agree having a paid service, or some viable finance model, is a good sign for longevity …that said Nebula is what Slack use themselves so publicly or privately it’s going to be kept developed!

      Just the fact the Android client is only properly configurable if you use their managed config service, made me worry a bit. Even though Tailscale you’re signing up for more eggs in their basket (unless you use Headscale), it felt like at least you start out on that basis, you aren’t pushed into it unexpectedly.

      I do like that both projects talk politely about each other. That feels like a good sign for both!

      I’ll check out Netbird, thank you.

      • paperdEnglish
        2·
        9 days ago

        Honestly any of the three of nebula, tailscale, netbird, or even vanilla wireguard are all great choices and you can’t really go wrong.

        It wasn’t that long ago when it was openVPN or nothing ;_;