What a VPN is for
- Business: an employee at home reaches servers in the office.
- Home: on holiday you check your cameras or files on the NAS without exposing them to the internet.
- Commercial: services that hide your IP address from websites. They do not protect against everything the ads claim.
WireGuard
WireGuard has only a few thousand lines of code, while older solutions have hundreds of thousands. It is faster and easier to audit for bugs. Linus Torvalds called it a work of art.
Tailscale
Tailscale builds on WireGuard and solves the hardest part: exchanging keys and connecting devices through NAT and firewalls. Install the app, sign in, and your devices see each other on a private network. It can also act as a gateway to your whole home network (subnet router).