Octelium
Security and privacy
zero trust access
SHOW HN2025
How HN took it
8 positive, 23 neutral or asking, 4 mixed, 26 critical, out of 61 comments about the project. Thread score -0.27.
Docs: 4 for, 14 againstIdea: 2 for, 6 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Maker is responsive and open to technical feedback
From 1 comment
You’re getting a lot of negative feedback but I think it’s mostly just people who don’t speak (or actively hate) enterprise jargon. Hacker News is not super enterprisey. Just…
et1337 on HN
Objections
README and landing text are full of buzzwords and hard to understand
From 3 comments
I have an immediate complete distrust to anything that throws around so many buzzwords. This is the github page and I still don't understand what it even does, specifically.
mzhaase on HNI'd appreciate if you could provide me a list of those buzzwords so that I can improve the readme.
geoctl on HNBelieve me I am the one who's actually still struggling to find where the jargon/buzzwords/naming dropping exactly is in my own README. Is it terms such as ZTNA/BeyondCorp, MCP,…
geoctl on HN
Unclear what the project actually does
From 1 comment
I have an immediate complete distrust to anything that throws around so many buzzwords. This is the github page and I still don't understand what it even does, specifically.
mzhaase on HN
Project was private until recently; initial commit history looks odd
From 2 comments
Thank you for your insightful feedback. I completely understand the criticism because Octelium is conciously designed to be many things at the same time. As mentioned in the…
geoctl on HNI have been developing the project solo on a private GitHub repo since 2020. I am not VC-backed or whatever else, Octelium has been a solo effort so far basically. The project…
geoctl on HN
Requests
Simplify the README and docs
From 2 comments
I completely agree with you. And tbqh since almost everybody in the thread is complaining about the README then I must be really doing something wrong explaining Octelium and…
geoctl on HNThank you, I will definitely add more kind of less-technical information on the homepage to make it easier to understand for business people. As for comparisons, I have been…
geoctl on HN
Add comparisons with competing products
From 1 comment
Thank you, I will definitely add more kind of less-technical information on the homepage to make it easier to understand for business people. As for comparisons, I have been…
geoctl on HN
Questions
Whether it is peer-to-peer or hub-and-spoke
From 2 comments
Looking at the docs, Octelium uses a hub-and-spoke model with Gateways acting as central routing points, unlike Tailscale's direct peer-to-peer mesh - this architectural…
ethan_smith on HNThe big thing to me about Tailscale is easy p2p connectivity. I think it looks like this doesn't do that and uses centralized router(s)?
yjftsjthsd-h on HN
Whether it replaces a simple VPN for connecting subnets
From 2 comments
This is similar to the current set up I have with tailscale, but it's not ideal, hence why i asked.
pydry on HNCan I ask you what an ideal setup for your use case would look like? Octelium isn't really concerned with connecting complete remote subnets to each other directly. You can…
geoctl on HN
Alternatives named
Cloudflare Access
From 1 comment
Teleport
From 1 comment
Tailscale
From 1 comment
Pomerium
From 1 comment
Quick note since it was mentioned. Pomerium does support Kubernetes at pretty much every level you mentioned (although I'm not entirely sure what a "a complete Kubernetes-tier…
bdesimone on HN
StrongDM
From 1 comment
You’re getting a lot of negative feedback but I think it’s mostly just people who don’t speak (or actively hate) enterprise jargon. Hacker News is not super enterprisey. Just…
et1337 on HN
Nebula
From 1 comment
See Nebula by slack
dangoodmanUT on HN