Tailscale VPN for remote access

Questions
#1

Since I’m moving over to Skylink, I am ending my use of a DNS and port forwarding. You can’t use these since Skylink uses CGNAT.

So I started looking into options for me to get remote access to my home devices (HomeAssistant, Synology NAS, ect…) and landed on Tailscale. Its very cool how it works. You install the tailscale client on all your devices you want to remote access, and it connects you directly like a VPN through an encrypted tunnel. The Tailscale client is available for just about every operating system.

For devices where the tailscale client is not possible (Example: Global Cache devices), it looks like you can setup a device in your local network as a “Tailscale Router” to route communication. So in my case, I can setup my HomeAssistant to operate as a tailscale router to my GC devices (and any other devices I’m using in THR). This is where I get lost…

Anyone using Tailscale and familiar with setting up the rules to do this?

Or am I misinterpreting what that means? Seems like a fantastic way to get a seamless way to connect THR whether your local or remote.

I’m only a couple hours into playing with it so, I’m very new to it. I’ll keep playing with it but figured I ask the brain trust first

#2

I probably should have spent another 30 min tinkering because thats all it took for me to figure it out… lol

Confirmed. I can use THR remotely. I did not have to change anything in my .hrp. Really cool how this works.

Here’s the highlights.

  • Install Tailscale client on any devices you want to network together. I saw somewhere this is considered a mesh VPN.

  • You can communicate to devices on your LAN that do not have Tailscale but you have to configure a Tailscale client to operate as a subnet router. This can be any device on the LAN running the client (HA, PC, AppleTV, Firestick, ect…). With the Tailscale add-on in Home Assistant all I needed to do was approve the Subnet router in the admin console.

  • In the Tailscale app on my phone, enable “LAN access”.

Thats it.

So far the only bug to work out is the Lutron bridge doesn’t update when i first open THR. Once I make a change, it connects/sync’s and all good.

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