452 The definitive Guide to Zerotier VPN and why it is 'better' than Wireguard (Tutorial)

Today, we will strike back! Not with a commercial of NordVPN or similar. No, the VPN we will build is free of charge! And it can be built by everybody in minutes. Very different from Wireguard, which is
complicated. Sounds like a deal? In addition, you will learn a lot about the internet.

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[TMS]

This only works if you trust public zerotier service. If you don't trust zerotier, the alternative is to run your own zerotier instance on your own public server. But if you're going to host your own public server, you might as well just run wireguard. Which in fact is exactly what I did. I disagree wireguard is complicated. I'm not going to put trust in someone else's servers in exchange for convenience. another huge plus in favor of wireguard is since it's native to linux, tons of network appliances speak it natively.

[MarkArnold-England]

I've been using ZeroTier for several years and have found it to be very stable and efficient. Thanks for promoting an alternative to Wire guard!

[WereCatf]

I'm going to have to correct some things: for one, OpenVPN, Wireguard and the likes *also* create a virtual private network. That's where the whole term "VPN" comes from and as such, the slide at 2:10 isn't entirely correct -- Tailscale, Cloudflare, OpenVPN, Wireguard etc. all create a virtual private network. You also don't need to open multiple ports for OpenVPN/Wireguard/etc. -- you only need one.

I don't disagree with the general gist of the video, ie. Zerotier/Tailscale/whatever is certainly easier for the less knowledgeable to set up and they work even behind CGNAT, but I am nitpicking about the specifics a little.

[dishendra.]

I have been using zerotier for more than a year now, installed it on my router running openwrt. Works like charm, fulfilling the requirements.

[DemocracyManifest-vcjn]

First of al you did an incredible job explaining the network, internet and some do the challenges thereabouts.
These extend to corporate and cloud applications as well. I wish I had this in college, amazing job

[adriangunnarlauterer]

Will make a call out to headscale. It is an opensource implementation of the tailscale server part. Really neat if you want to be entirely independent of others and want to run your own zero config vpn. It even has a unofficial webui and can be easily setup with docer. If you do not want tailscale on every machine you can add a relay node that can bridge local net to the mesh network.

[Thommelbommel]

Please don't leave out the summary! I love it!

[Anavllama]

All good comments below, wireguard is far easier than most other VPNs and zerotier is not that simple (perhaps from a single user device setup but so is WG). Where zerotier really shines IMHO is for Layer2 connectivity that is harder to accomplish over L3 tunnels such as wireguard ( think mDNS and discovery in general ). Thanks for the video!!

[renobodyrenobody]

Thanks for the video. I use zerotier since years and Tailscale for the last six months. I want to add I am in China and everything is difficult behind the great numeric wall. I found Tailscale quite easy to use especially with the exit node (never been able to configure it with zerotier).

[mormegil]

I have been using Zerotier for quite a while indeed i am very happy with it. The website GUI is a bit anachronistic and a less technical person might have difficulties with it. But i have not had any other issues. It works really great.

Α small correction is that Zero tier is not exactly open source. It has a business source license which does not fit all criteria for open source. Every version of the software starts proprietary with source code available and limited rights and becomes open source using the Apache license after a specific number of years.

[Tntdruid]

You share data whit ZeroTier, WG is still better for my setup.

[ewm]

Thank you Andreas, as always you inspire!👍For the time being I'm very happy with WireGuard running on 2 SBCs and connecting 2 locations since 2 years without interruption. I'm a little scared to register at some service. But will look into ZeroTier!

[ryankendrick]

Some notes: Zerotier can only be used for non-commercial uses for free & you're capped at 25 nodes unless you self host the controller. Zerotier does require open ports or relays, but the open ports only have to be on one-side at least & can be achieved via UPnP. Side note: At work, I own the roadmap for a scalable network orchestrator that deploys Wireguard and IPsec tunnels to Linux boxes via Ansible. I know that there is a bit of a learning curve for home-labbers but well worth it to learn network automation for the CV. I use both Zerotier and Wireguard for my home lab, but for different use cases. I've also used OpenVPN and Hamachi back in the day.

[Trught]

Zerotier is end-to-end encrypted anonymous cloud managed (can be self-hosted, docker or server) tunel, have some limitations like data limit, client limit in cloud version. Wireguard is self-hosted non-anonymous tunel which need at least 1 public IP for server, no limits, no clouds, fast and light server can run directly on router. Usage depends at preference and conditions.

[AMian-yfhn]

1. An important plus of Zero Tier over other "VPNs" is that ZT, after initial connection to the server, will then connect devices to each other in a shortest path fashion. So you get minimal latency which is crucial for interactive apps like gaming or VoIP.
2. Reading the Tailsacle/Headscale docs tells me that they do deal effectively with CGNAT, vs many comments here about native Wireguad's inability.

[canadianwildlifeservice]

Great video. Unfortunately sometimes firewalls will block UDP traffic (even UDP on port 443...the QUIC protocol), Since Wireguard uses UDP, this is where the problem is and is why Wireguard is known for not working when attempting to bypass firewall restrictions. OpenVPN, which can use either UDP or TCP, is not so easily blocked. So many times, people will still choose to use OpenVPN on TCP port 443 over Wireguard. TCP on port 443 is known as HTTPS and is what is used for normal secure web browsing and is not blocked by firewalls since doing so would basically break the internet as we know it.

[PenguinzLOLZ]

10/10 Very educational :=). I'll be setting this up later to access a local SMB drive from outside my local network.

[tttuberc]

I've been using Tailscale. How's Zerotier compared to Tailscale in your opinion? I see you mention that we can host our own server which I think a plus, though I wonder if there are more to it. Thanks

[dannymeier]

Guten Morgen, im Video wurden noch andere Services wie Nebula, Cloudflare oder Tailscale genannte. Was war ausschlaggebend Zerotier zu nutzen, resp. wo unterscheiden sich die anderen?

[the-papaw]

Very, very good video. You explain things very well, stay to the point. Very well done!