Totally agreed on the over-complexity and un-securability of TLS, that too often is deployed where something simpler should be used instead.
However, wouldn't OpenSSH be the thing spiped replaces most of the times? And that has a better security track record (I mean, better than OpenSSL for sure).
Basically, for internal infrastructure, where autossh wont work and/or where something simpler than ssh is desired.
So the strawmen arguments about it not replacing TLS is not the point.
stud, nginx, stunnel, f5 load balancers and cloudflare will still be needed for now, until 'moxie0 or someone comes up with a viable CA alternative AND something way, way simpler than TLS (brain-hurt ASN1, even with Wireshark).
Well, since you mention it, why did you write spiped? It seems like if you just wanted to protect network services from the internet you could have A) segmented your network, B) used ssh, C) used one of the myriad other existing non-TLS tunneling protocols. Doing A might expose you to less risk than B or C, since with tunnels if your client is owned your server is still vulnerable. Of course if you just wanted to code something for fun I totally understand that too. But it seems like there were already alternatives to stunnel (and I don't really get why people use stunnel to begin with)
Segmenting my network isn't an option when "my network" involves machines on multiple continents.
I avoided ssh because sshd is an effectively unauditable mess, and breaks the "transient network glitches don't kill quiescent connections" assumption.
How do transient network glitches kill the connection? I'm not completely familiar with the ssh wire protocol, but to my knowledge TCP is largely responsible for ensuring the reliability of the virtual circuit even in the event of a transient lower-layer failure.
ssh frequently uses either application-level or TCP-level keepalives. But it doesn't have to; you can just turn off ssh keepalives and your quiescent connections will survive network outages.
However, wouldn't OpenSSH be the thing spiped replaces most of the times? And that has a better security track record (I mean, better than OpenSSL for sure).