[homebrewer]

Because they have good PR. Mesh networks are a dime a dozen, some of them have existed for decades and do not even rely on a central server (see tinc for an example).

There are more lightweight projects that rely on native kernel mode wireguard (thus giving fantastic performance) and only simplify key setup, without the need for persistent daemons that have had their own high severity CVEs. If you're asking this question, you might be better served by something like innernet (again, there are tons of alternatives).

There are more alternatives that are fully open and self hostable (including all server components), have support for the native kernel module, while having the same feature set as Tailscale (like netbird, but it's not the only one).

But TS is an HN darling because their devs have a presence here, some of them very well known and highly visible, and the company places lost of advertisements in podcasts and such.

[BrandoElFollito]

I work in IT for 30 years, wrote a tiny bit of the Linux kernel, self host plenty of things yada yada yada.

When I discovered tailscale it was a godsend - all the annoying, boring, moving parts are gone. Thus is a fantastic product that just works.

I have a backup WG link to my main servers just in case but this is that: a backup.