this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2025
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Hello everyone, hope you are doing great.

I am not sure if my question goes here, but this was my best guess. Apologies if I am wrong.

So, I have been using the mesh network offered by NordVPN alongside with their VPN subscription to sync some folders between my phone (Android) and my laptop (Linux Mint). This was great because I remember not being able to use Tailscale and VPN at the same time in the past, at least not on my phone.

Now they are dropping Meshnet support in December, so I am trying to figure out if there's any way I can still run NordVPN and a Meshnet, or if I have to discard one.

If you know of any alternative, please let me know!

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[–] MasterOKhan@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago (5 children)

It might not be what you’re looking for, but tailscale offers end points where you can use mulvad vpn in conjunction with your tailscale network, might be worth looking into! I use it and it works great.

Obligatory due to the sub we’re in. I don’t believe tailscale falls into the space of “self hosted”. You’d need to set up your own wireguard server for that.

[–] artiman@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 1 points 1 day ago

I could never get this working in a basic Docker image pushed to Fly.io.

[–] stratself@lemdro.id 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Worth noting that there's an open issue to support Wireguard peers into Headscale, so you could use it with e.g. a wg0.conf file from a commercial VPN

[–] undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch 1 points 1 day ago

That might make me re-look into using Headscale.

[–] hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did both. Setting up your own VPN is a bit annoying but when it works it works. Tailscale is really easy and solid. For folder syncing I can recommend using tailscale and syncthing. Install both on both devices, then connect the devices in sync thing (it will reciprocate) and then you can add a folder and share it with the other device. Latency for syncing can be 10s-3min, plus the actual file transfer speed.

Knowledge level: configuring software and setting up software. Maybe some basic network troubleshooting if it comes up.

It's never gonna be as easy as paying for a service that does it for you but this setup is also not that hard.

If you have questions feel free to ask me or other nerds on here, I'm sure they can help you ^^~

[–] Lemonade@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

In fact, it's Syncthing what I use in LAN (mesh) mode. Thanks for the help :D

[–] dan@upvote.au 4 points 1 day ago

Tailscale is "mostly" self-hosted, in that the VPN connection itself is peer-to-peer almost all the time. You can host your own Headscale and DERP/Relay servers to make it fully self-hosted, but tbh I'm fine not self-hosting the control plane.

The relay server is only used if both ends have very restrictive NAT and none of the NAT hole punching techniques work, which is rare other than on very locked down corporate networks. If you have IPv6 enabled on both ends, you shouldn't have issues making a direct connection, as IPv6 doesn't use NAT. Even with regular NAT (like a home internet connection) on both ends, Tailscale can use UDP hole punching on both ends to establish a direct connection.

[–] Lemonade@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

I thought of that, my problem is that I have another year of NordVPN subscription paid, and I don't want to waste it. But lesson learned, no more long subscriptions.

Thanks for the clarification!

[–] dparticiple@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

Fellow satisfied Tailscale user here. Worth noting that one can host a custom control plane server if desired, which in theory removes cloud dependencies for Tailscale from the equation: https://tailscale.com/kb/1507/custom-control-server. Use of Mullvad exit nodes is optional ($5 / mo for 5 machines at time of writing). I'm not sure if TS' native exit node feature can be configured to use other/sepf-hosted VPNs, but I suspect this is not supported.