Tailscale Releases Tailcat, A Netcat Built On Its Data Plane
Tailcat keeps netcat's one-address simplicity but hands the network problems, NAT traversal and encryption, to Tailscale's data plane, which is the part of the stack the project's own author argues plain WireGuard does not solve.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Tailcat is a command line tool from Tailscale that sends text and files between two machines using Tailscale's WireGuard-based encryption and NAT traversal, without the Tailscale control plane. The receiving side prints an address; the sender passes that address to tailcat. The tool also serves SSH, files, web servers, and forwarded ports, and ships as a Go library and a WebAssembly build.
Start tailcat on the machine you want to reach and it prints an address starting with tc. Send from the other side with a single command, or run serve to expose SSH, a directory, a web server, or a forwarded port. A ping subcommand shows the path: the connection starts through a DERP relay and switches to direct WireGuard once NAT traversal succeeds. Tailscale also offers a Go library and a browser build for the same transport.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.