this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Cost Benefit: Tailscale vs. Tailscale w/ Self-Hosted Headscale Instance vs. VPN Provider (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by AlecStewart1st@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hello friends!

For awhile now I've wanted to delve into self-hosting and the first thing I thought of was ditching my VPN Provider for my own VPN solution.

I wanted to ask about the cost/benefit of each option with those of you who are more experienced.

Option One: Stick with my VPN Provider:

This is a funky case, as my VPN Provider is with Proton, and my email and VPN accounts are linked together. Since I've been with them for awhile, I have over a gigabyte of storage for emails. I rarely ever get past 400MB. The VPN is fine, occasionally I have some hiccups with speed but it overall works. I pay roughly $19.20/month for both a paid email account and the VPN service, so it's likely the second cheapest. When it comes to privacy, though, I'm not 100% sold Proton wouldn't just sell my data for no reason. Yes, they are Swiss, but that doesn't entirely reassure me.

The weird thing about this is my PiHole is decoupled from the VPN. At least in the mobile app, I see no option to use your own DNS. There's also no provided way nor really an obvious way for me to connect to all of my devices if they're all on ProtonVPN, as opposed to the other two options.

Option Two: Just use Tailscale

Personally I'd like to mess with the ACLs so probably I'd wind up with the $6/month plan. For the $18/month plan I don't really know what "Tailscale SSH" even means, as I don't know what magic they do to wrap SSH into something worth paying for. I've heard mixed things about "Tailscale Funnel."

I hear Tailscale is easy to install and there's no real extra fidgeting you'd have to do for your home network. Tailscale will also let me use my PiHole as my DNS, getting me ad-blocking from PiHole on all devices on Tailscale.

Option Three: Self-Hosted Headscale

This is one I'm interested in, but I don't know the feasibility of it. The initial idea was to get a VPS and install OpenBSD on it and make it my Headscale instance. I've installed OpenBSD before, I mostly know my way around it and I like how lightweight it is and how security focused it is. There would be more setup initially, but I don't really mind that. I do a lot of fidgeting on my Linux desktop anyway.

The main thing for this is cost. I don't really know what performance specs for a VPS I would need to reasonably have good network performance with ~10 devices, though I'm guessing I'll have to have something =<10Gbsp. So maybe $25-$30/month depending on who I buy a VPS through?

The other thing is updating stuff. I can just SSH and do all of that manually and since the VPS will be dedicated specifically to being a Headscale server, but that is still time I have to spend.

Lastly, I wouldn't have the international selection of VPN locations like with a VPN provider, just one, but it's not like I'm trying to bounce my connection from country and that's not advisable anyway.

Other options

Setting up a VPS with Wireguard myself. While I wouldn't mind it too much, Tailscale exists for a reason and it can traverse firewalls without me having to configure a bunch of devices so that's a big plus.

Running Headscale in a container on my Linux desktop, but this means my desktop would have to be on almost 24/7 and I don't know how I feel about having my VPN stuff to be sitting directly inside my home network.

What are your opinions?

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[–] Jerry1098@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

For Headscale you don't need a lot of bandwidth or power because your traffic is not routed through the Headscale server. Headscale only helps to directly connect your clients together without having to open ports

[–] AlecStewart1st@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

your traffic is not routed through the Headscale server

Damn, well is there a means of using both Headscale and routing your traffic somewhere else?

My big reason for looking into Tailscale/Headscale is the ability to connect to my devices at home, at the office or a VPS that's in a different state/province and having the ability to use my PiHole as my DNS, but I would still like my network traffic to be (mostly, as an VPN doesn't save you from other tracking methods) protected.

[–] allan@lemmyrs.org 1 points 1 year ago

You set up a node on some other server and enable it to be an exit node, and can then access the Internet through that one. So any node on your net can be your VPN exit point at any time, if you want to juggle several, for example

[–] Moonrise2473@feddit.it 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

$20 per month for 400mb of email + a VPN was an acceptable cost maybe in 1998, now it's insanely expensive

For tailscale, for personal use i don't see why the free plan is not enough, you need more than 3 users? ACLs can still be edited on the free plan.

And then you need to tell us why you're using the VPN. Just privacy when using unsecured wifi? Or ISP tracking paranoia? Or torrenting? By default tailscale does not route any WAN traffic, it can optionally use one of your nodes as an exit node, but that's it. You mention "leaving your desktop to be 24/7" so you don't have a server at home. If you run tailscale on the way that means the exit node will be off and you are not using a VPN. Because you're using your own connection, it does not solve ISP tracking or torrenting issues.

Maybe for you cloudflare warp is better?

[–] AlecStewart1st@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

$20 per month for 400mb of email + a VPN was an acceptable cost maybe in 1998, now it’s insanely expensive

Yea I have a business plan with Proton. No idea why I upgraded but I remember doing it.

And then you need to tell us why you’re using the VPN. Just privacy when using unsecured wifi? Or ISP tracking paranoia? Or torrenting?

Yes, yes and yes lol. Also I would like to connect to devices privacy and see if I can make use of my PiHole when I'm not on my home network where the PiHole is located.

[–] seshat@lemmy.963.pm 3 points 1 year ago

You might be confused about self hosting, your desktop should not be 24/7 online, you are the client and you want to use the vps as exit node, where you host also headscale. And please don't spend 20$ for a vps, you better rent 4 or more with 20$ from different providers and you can have more exists nodes. Headscale or wireguard are not eating a lot of resources. What you should look is at bandwidth , unlimited is better, you won't find many vps providers with unlimited bandwidth Even if you are behind a CGNAT using wireguard as client won't be any problems,because you are going OUT not coming IN.

[–] timespace@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Slightly off topic but what proton subscription do you have? Proton Unlimited is email + storage via Drive with 500GB and VPN for $12.99/mo if paying monthly, otherwise it’s $10/mo or $8/mo if you pay 1 or 2 years in advance, respectively.

[–] AlecStewart1st@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I have a business account with them. I don't really remember why I upgraded to a business plan. Might downgrade it to save a few bucks for now.

[–] nutbutter@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Off-topic. Not about cost, but about privacy:

Considering you are using Proton, you care about digital privacy. If you are not trusting Proton, you should not trust Tailscale as well, in my opinion. Tailscale's backend is closed-source, you get no control, and nothing is stopping them from selling you data either. If you go for Headscale, you may be in a slightly better position. But websites and big companies like Google can still make detailed profile of you, as you will be connecting to everything using a single IP, that is, the IP of your VPS. But again, nobody is stopping your VPS provider from selling your data either.

Another question is that why are you paying $19 for that? They have $10-12 plans that come with 500 GB storage, emails with 3 custom domains and high-speed VPN.

Also, if you do not trust Proton, you can consider Mullvad or IVPN. They are just $5/m, and you can pay via Monero, but they do not have as many servers as Proton does.

Another question that pops in my mind is, why do you need a VPN? Do you need to connect to your services privately, or do you just need to change your IP for (relatively) better privacy? Again, paying someone with multiple VPN options is better than setting up a single VPN by yourself, in my opinion.

[–] AlecStewart1st@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If you are not trusting Proton, you should not trust Tailscale as well, in my opinion.

True, although I don't know if I say I don't trust them. It's more of a sense of skepticism that's always in the back of my mind when it comes to any service.

Another question is that why are you paying $19 for that? They have $10-12 plans that come with 500 GB storage, emails with 3 custom domains and high-speed VPN.

I have a business account with them. I'm trying to remember why I upgraded...

Another question that pops in my mind is, why do you need a VPN? Do you need to connect to your services privately, or do you just need to change your IP for (relatively) better privacy?

At this point, if I'm going to do be doing more self-hosting I'd want the ability to connect to services privately. The other thing is that with Tailscale I can set my PiHole as my DNS server. That way any device on the tailnet gets the ad blocking as well. Plus, if I can get unbound with DNS-over-HTTPS (via stubby) setup on it then I have a pretty secure and fairly private setup. That's kind of what's got me thinking about moving to Tailscale.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An IP is the least of the things they track you with nowadays. Thinking my IP is not mine they can't track me is outdated and pushed by the VPN providers.

[–] bamboo@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

It's a bit more complicated than that. Your IP can identify you still, if there are few users connecting from that IP. VPNs reduce the efficacy of IP based tracking because they allow you to connect via many different addresses, and every one of those addresses will have hundreds of thousands of users on a given day. It adds a lot of noise that makes any pattern identification useless.

[–] meteokr@community.adiquaints.moe 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The main thing for this is cost. I don’t really know what performance specs for a VPS I would need to reasonably have good network performance with ~10 devices, though I’m guessing I’ll have to have something =<10Gbsp. So maybe $25-$30/month depending on who I buy a VPS through?

Would EACH of your devices have their own dedicated gigabit connection to your server? Even so, are you the only user or is this for some family members also? If its just you, you can 9/10 just get a basic 5$ or less gigabit VPS. You'd much more often be limited by your outbound connection than your VPS networking, by a considerable margin. Most things you are connecting to won't saturate even a gigabit connection, so you'd be well under your bandwidth requirements.

[–] AlecStewart1st@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

are you the only user or is this for some family members also?

Probably just me and my fiance at the moment.

you can 9/10 just get a basic 5$ or less gigabit VPS.

Sweet, good to know!

[–] Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
CGNAT Carrier-Grade NAT
DNS Domain Name Service/System
HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
HTTPS HTTP over SSL
IP Internet Protocol
NAT Network Address Translation
PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
SSL Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
VPN Virtual Private Network
VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)

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