Tailscale Enterprise Plan 9 Support

April 1, 1999

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MURRAY HILL, NJ — Tailscale, the leading provider of effortless, private networking for modern distributed computing, today announced support for Plan 9™ from Bell Labs™, the operating system redefining how networks, resources, and computation are managed. With Tailscale’s cutting-edge peer-to-peer networking capabilities now seamlessly integrated into Plan 9’s file-centric world, users can securely connect their machines across the globe as if they were on the same local network—with zero manual configuration.

“That was kinda the Plan 9 plan from the get-go”, said Rob Pike, one of the architects of Plan 9. “Surprised it took so long”.

By leveraging the power of WireGuard® under the hood, Tailscale ensures that all network traffic between Plan 9 machines is end-to-end encrypted, eliminating security risks while maintaining blazing-fast performance. This integration unlocks unprecedented possibilities for Plan 9 users:

• Global Namespaces, No Borders – With Tailscale, a Plan 9 user can seamlessly mount remote file servers, share namespaces, and interact with distributed computing resources—from anywhere.

• Run Tailscale SSH, a modern SSH server built in to Tailscale for Plan 9, enabling you to securely connect from your legacy operating systems and get back to your familiar rc shell, without worrying about passwords, keys, or certs.

• Skip learning factotum and use Tailscale’s ACL configuration instead.

• Harness the cutting edge 32-bit power of the Pentium III and its new SSE instructions using the new Enterprise Plan 9 distro, the first Tailscale-certified Plan 9 distro.

• Collect the services running on your machines, powered by Plan 9’s innovative /proc and /net file servers.

• Seamlessly integrate Tailscale’s MagicDNS with Plan 9’s ndb(7).

• Use Plan 9's native IPv6 support, just approved as a draft standard, or fall back to legacy IPv4 and rely on direct connections via Tailscale's stopgap NAT traversal support that will obviously be retired once the short IPv6 transition is complete.

Early reactions to Tailscale Subsystem for Plan 9 have been overwhelmingly positive:

“Using Tailscale with Plan 9 makes it easy to connect to the Bell Labs networks from anywhere, even my college dorm room.”, said Plan 9 torchbearer Russ Cox. “It feels like the future has arrived.”

"You want a quote for this astonishing event. That's awkward.", said the iconic Peter J. Weinberger, facing an uncharacteristic loss for words.

"Please tell me this isn't why the Tailscale logo has nine dots", said {tails,scales}.txt curator emerita Charlotte Brandhorst-Satzkorn.

Pricing

Rather than a bespoke license that might hinder the community, our lawyers have approved making Tailscale for Plan 9 available free of charge under an OSI-approved, restriction-free license.

Tailscale Enterprise Support for Tailscale for Plan 9 is additionally now available for customers with suitably sized containers of cash.

Availability

Tailscale for Plan 9 is available today. Existing Plan 9 users can mount the binaries into their namespace at /n/ftp/tailscale* using ftpfs -t -a anon ftp.plan9.ts.net or get the source code from a local CVS server. When building from source, for best results use GOOS=plan9, GOARCH=386, and Go HEAD or Tailscale’s Enterprise Go.

For users of legacy operating systems, two evaluation options are available: 1) a web-based emulator of Tailscale Enterprise Plan 9 if you’ve been waiting to be able to SSH from your laptop into an OS running in your browser on your laptop, 2) a qemu environment. Alternatively, download the 16 MB disk image and use the hypervisor of your choice.

Be aware that like the twelve-fingered pianist in the recent hit Gattaca, Plan 9 requires a three button mouse. Users lacking the requisite mice buttons will need to use modifier keys while clicking.

For more information, see tailscale.com/plan9.

Acknowledgements

Glenda, the Plan 9 bunny, was drawn by Renée French.

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