Tailscale's DNS IPv6 spells out "Tailscale"

66 pointsposted 2 hours ago
by theanonymousone

21 Comments

DaSHacka

2 hours ago

Related: the name for your Tailnet is randomly-generated from a list of 'tails', and a list of 'scales' in the format `<a tail>-<a scale>.ts.net`.

Many puns and easter-eggs in both! Recommend giving it a quick glance, some are pretty fun. Some examples include 'fable' as a 'tail' (IE 'tale'), and 'universe' as a 'scale'.

Words can be present in both lists when the entity is applicable to both a tail and a scale, so a tailnet named `koi-koi.ts.net` is theoretically possible too.

Found out about it after I randomly lucked into rolling 'miku' as my 'tail' when first creating my account :)

https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/tree/main/words

bluehatbrit

36 minutes ago

I added "wyrm" into both lists a while back to make wyrm-wyrm possible for some lucky individual.

himata4113

2 hours ago

This makes me think about something. Why don't we support this as a standard?

It would be nice if local ipv6 spelled out "local"

imagine this: local::homelab in your url-bar just working

edit: Yes I know DNS solves this problem, but it would be very neat non the less, making 128bits of packet overhead actually serve a purpose without any software glue.

jjmarr

an hour ago

The `.local` TLD exists as a zeroconf domain name for this purpose on local networks. Your homelab can advertise as `homelab.local` without setting up custom DNS servers.

hgoel

11 minutes ago

Or .internal if you do setup your own DNS servers.

gregoriol

2 hours ago

We want IPs to be distinctive from domains, having real words in both would be highly confusing

iknowstuff

an hour ago

mDNS does that. Your devices are already accessible on your network as eg “himatas-iphone.local” with no configuration required.

sigbottle

26 minutes ago

mDNS my goat. I have a lot of spare machines and I do a lot of various experiments on said machines, some of which could brick the system even on NixOS. I now have a custom usb installer over mDNS and reflashing any compute I have from scratch for the express purpose of destroying it in a few days hasn't been easier

earthpyy

2 hours ago

Maybe because IPv6 digits are hexadecimal? and we also have DNS service for that.

vel0city

an hour ago

I don't have to imagine, in fact its even easier. I can just go to http://brother in by browser and it goes to my brother printer. Incredible!

morley

2 hours ago

Is there a technical reason it starts at index 2 instead of 0?

psyonity

an hour ago

The `fd` part indicates it's a ULA, a local private ip address. (like 192.168.0.x)

johen8

2 hours ago

Sound it out with your mouth: "What DNS do you use?"

"One hundred one hundred one hundred one hundred"

or

"one hundred, 4 times"

vs.

"f d seven a colon one one five c colon a one e zero colon colon five three"

This is just a rant but IPv6 will never be widely adopted.

wolrah

an hour ago

This has forever been and will forever be the dumbest anti-IPv6 complaint.

How often do you really need to communicate a complete IP address manually, human to human, via voice or handwriting where you can't just copy/paste?

I mean REALLY NEED. Not just "I'm too lazy to set up DNS", not some hypothetical nonsense where you've found yourself on a network that has functional IPv6 but all autoconfiguration beyond SLAAC is disabled, etc. It just doesn't happen at a rate sufficient to justify how much people like you whine about it.

DNS works. You set it up correctly once when you provision the system, it stays working, you never need to think about a raw IP address again until it's time to deploy a new system or something weird happens like changing a NIC. If your DNS is that broken that you can't depend on it, fix that first and stop worrying about trying to remember complete addresses. If you need to tell a colleague what system you're looking at and DNS is not properly configured for that system, "the one ending in 44a1" is more than sufficient 99% of the time in the same way "the one ending in 127" was for v4 and the rest of the time you have computers and copy/paste works.

johen8

28 minutes ago

Actually yesterday I was at a client doing a demonstration. I am a software developer, but not an IT/network guy, so I just knew to connect to their network, look at ipconfig and tell them the IP of my computer so they could connect to my machine to test the software. I just look at it and said "i'm at zero point fifty four" (it was 192.168.0.54). How would this look in IPv6? (It's a genuine question, because from what I see it would be something like "i'm at f e seven four colon colon colon zero one a", it honestly adds friction.

vel0city

an hour ago

It could have easily just been "f d zero zero colon colon 1", They're just trying to be fancy with their network addresses.

justsomehnguy

42 minutes ago

99.999999% of human population would never even know what DNS is. You are yelling at cloud.