> but it may mean building new standards on top of the duct-taped 1980s-era networking stack the modern Internet still runs on.
That’s a path directly into a money burning machine that goes nowhere. This has been tried so many times by far larger companies, academics, and research labs but it never works (see all proposals for things like content address networking, etc). You either get zero adoption or you just run it on IPv4/6 anyway and you give up most of the problems.
IPv6 is still struggling to kill IPv4 20 years after support existing in operating systems and routers. That’s a protocol with a clear upside, somewhat socket compatible, and was backed by the IETF and hundreds of networking companies.
But even today it’s struggling and no company got rich on IPv6.
IPv6 has struggled in adoption not because it’s bad, but because it requires a full-stack cutover, from edge devices all the way to ISP infra. That’s a non-starter unless you’re doing greenfield deployments.
Tailscale, on the other hand, doesn’t need to wait for the Internet to upgrade. Their model sits on top of the existing stack, works through NATs, and focuses on "identity-first networking". They could evolve at the transport or app layer rather than rip and replacing at the network layer. That gives them way more flexibility to innovate without requiring global consensus.
Again, I don’t know what their specific plans are, but if they’re chasing something at that layer, it’s not crazy to think of it more like building a new abstraction on top of TCP/IP vs. trying to replace it.
That’s a path directly into a money burning machine that goes nowhere. This has been tried so many times by far larger companies, academics, and research labs but it never works (see all proposals for things like content address networking, etc). You either get zero adoption or you just run it on IPv4/6 anyway and you give up most of the problems.
IPv6 is still struggling to kill IPv4 20 years after support existing in operating systems and routers. That’s a protocol with a clear upside, somewhat socket compatible, and was backed by the IETF and hundreds of networking companies.
But even today it’s struggling and no company got rich on IPv6.