May 2020 Summaries

In May 2020, Tailscale welcomed its first batch of interns from the University of Waterloo, including Zijie Lu, Wendi Yu, and Dmytro Shynkevych, each bringing unique skills and experiences to the team. Zijie, a Mathematics student from Beijing, is enhancing the network admin console with his expertise in Go, React, and Vue, while also being a top-ranked DOTA2 player. Wendi, a Software Engineering student based in Edmonton, contributes to real-time network auditing and visualization, drawing on her experience with Waterloo's rocketry design team and as a sousaphonist. Dmytro, a Computer Science student from Ukraine, is working on the MagicDNS feature, leveraging his background in machine learning and 3D rendering from previous internships and his passion for cybersecurity. Their diverse talents are set to make significant contributions to Tailscale's public repositories in the coming months.

Following the general availability announcement of Tailscale, the team has released a minor update to their client apps, addressing connectivity issues and platform-specific bugs, while introducing improved features such as a preference for IPv6 over IPv4 for encrypted packets and smoother network transitions. The update includes better Okta support for team authentication and the addition of a new relay server in Sydney to reduce latency for users in Oceania. Tailscale also published a VPN Reviewer’s Guide to aid teams in choosing the right VPN, and they highlighted notable community contributions, such as an article by @mrkaran on using Tailscale with a Raspberry Pi Kubernetes cluster and a Synology NAS package builder by @nirev. Additionally, Tailscale announced an upcoming Android beta app, inviting users to participate in testing.

Tailscale's v0.98 release focuses on improving connectivity and stability by addressing platform-specific bugs and enhancing network switching capabilities, such as preferring IPv6 over IPv4 for encrypted packet transmission, though IPv6 is not yet available within the Tailscale network. The update ensures smoother transitions between Wi-Fi and LTE, resolves connection reset issues on Windows when new nodes are added, and adjusts MTU settings to prevent packet loss for users on Google Cloud or DSL. Users are encouraged to update to this version to benefit from these improvements, and outdated nodes can be monitored through the admin console.