From the newsletter:
We’ve recently released tailcat, a remix of pieces of Tailscale that gives you a way to use the open-source Tailscale data plane without the Tailscale control plane, written by the people who made Tailscale.
Specifically, tailcat is both an open-source Go package and a CLI tool using that package. It lets you run a server-side listener and a client to connect to that server, moving bidirectional bytes back and forth.
Potential usage info from the website link - https://tailscale.com/tailcat:
Setting up a tailnet makes sense when you need governable access, identity, and policy. Sometimes you don’t. You might need to SSH into a development environment for an hour. Give an agent access to a test machine for one task. Connect a game session. Move a file between two machines. Tailcat gives you a secure connection without requiring either side to become part of a larger network.
A technical explanation from the github:
Tailcat is a remix of Tailscale open source pieces to act like netcat, but over Tailscale’s data plane, without Tailscale’s control plane. Tailscale’s data plane (magicsock, internally) gives you point-to-point WireGuard®-encrypted tunnels between two machines with DERP as the NAT-hole-punching communication side channel and the ultimate relay-of-last-resort if NAT traversal fails. Instead of using the Tailscale control plane, all tailcat connection metadata is exchanged out of band, however you want.
License: BSD 3-Clause License
With normal Tailscale they host the management end of things, you host the servers, their system negotiates directly connecting them together.
I think this lets you host that management connection yourself. But I’m kinda confused just wtf is going on.
No, but if you wanted to do that, headscale is the answer
There is no management connection. It’s just managed locally but has their UDP hole punching feature