Subnet routers and traffic relay nodes

Tailscale works best when you install the Tailscale client on every client, server, and virtual machine (VM) in your organization. This ensures traffic is end-to-end encrypted, and no configuration is needed to move machines between physical locations.

However, in some situations, you can't or don't want to install Tailscale on each device:

• With embedded devices, like printers, which don't run external software
• When connecting large quantities of devices, like an entire AWS VPC
• When incrementally deploying Tailscale (for example, on legacy networks)

In these cases, you can set up a "subnet router" (previously called a relay node) to access these devices from Tailscale. Subnet routers act as a gateway, relaying traffic from your Tailscale network onto your physical subnet. Subnet routers respect features like access control policies, which make it easy to migrate a large network to Tailscale without installing the app on every device.

Devices behind a subnet router do not count toward your pricing plan's device limit. However, installing Tailscale directly on devices wherever possible offers better performance, security, and a zero-configuration setup.

Set up a subnet router

To activate a subnet router on a Linux, macOS, tvOS, or Windows machine:

1. Install the Tailscale client.
2. Connect to Tailscale as a subnet router.
3. Enable subnet routes from the admin console.
4. Add access rules for advertised subnet routes.
5. Verify your connection.
6. Use your subnet routes from other devices.

Install the Tailscale client

Connect to Tailscale as a subnet router

After the installation completes, you can start (or restart) Tailscale as a subnet router:

sudo tailscale up --advertise-routes=192.168.0.0/24,192.168.1.0/24

Replace the subnets in the example above with the right ones for your network. Both IPv4 and IPv6 subnets are supported.

If the device is authenticated by a user who can advertise the specified route in autoApprovers, then the subnet router's routes will automatically be approved. You can also advertise any subset of the routes allowed by autoApprovers in the tailnet policy file.

Enable subnet routes from the admin console

This step is not required if you use autoApprovers.

1. Open the Machines page of the admin console.
2. Locate the Subnets badge in the machines list or use the property:subnet filter to list all devices advertising subnet routes.
3. Select the menu, then select Edit route settings. This will open up the Edit route settings panel.
4. Select Approve all on your routes so that Tailscale distributes the subnet routes to the rest of the nodes on your Tailscale network. Alternatively, you can approve each route individually by selecting the toggle to the left of the route.

Add access rules for the advertised subnet routes

This step is not required if you already have rules that allow access to your advertised subnet routes.

1. Open the Access Controls page of the admin console to update your tailnet policy file.
2. Create an access rule that allows access to the advertised subnet.

What this access rule does:

• Members of the development team group:dev can access devices in the subnets 192.168.0.0/24 and 192.168.1.0/24.
• The subnet 192.168.0.0/24 can access the subnet 192.168.1.0/24 and vice versa, if subnet route masquerading is disabled.

{
  "groups": {
    "group:dev": ["alice@example.com", "bob@example.com"]
  },
  "acls": [
    // Users in group:dev and devices in subnets 192.168.0.0/24 and
    // 192.168.1.0/24 can access devices in subnets 192.168.0.0/24 and
    // 192.168.1.0/24
    { "action": "accept",
      "src": ["group:dev","192.168.0.0/24", "192.168.1.0/24"],
      "dst": ["192.168.0.0/24:*", "192.168.1.0/24:*"]
    }
  ]
}

Select Save on your tailnet policy file so the Tailscale coordination server distributes the updated policy to the nodes in your tailnet.

Verify your connection

Check that you can ping the Tailscale IP address of your new subnet routers from your personal Tailscale device (such as a Linux, macOS, or Windows device). You can find the Tailscale IP in the admin console or by running the following command on the subnet router.

tailscale ip -4

Use your subnet routes from other machines

Clients on Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS, and Windows automatically pick up your new subnet routes.

Only Linux clients using the --accept-routes flag discover the new routes automatically because the default is to use only the Tailscale 100.x` addresses. You can enable automatic route discovery on Linux by running the following command:

sudo tailscale up --accept-routes

Update subnet routes

To update subnet routes:

1. Connect to Tailscale as a subnet router.
2. Enable subnet routes from the admin console.
3. Add access rules for advertised subnet routes.
4. Verify your connection.
5. Use your subnet routes from other devices.

Previously enabled routes that you exclude when enabling subnet routes will no longer appear as advertised. You can remove unused routes or keep them enabled if you plan to re-advertise them.

Route DNS lookups to an internal DNS server

You can add Tailscale IPs to public DNS records because Tailscale IPs are only accessible to authenticated users of your network. You can use an internal DNS server on your subnet by configuring split DNS in the DNS page of the admin console.

Set up high availability

You can set up high availability to ensure your network is connectable even if one subnet router goes offline. For more information, refer to our article on high availability failover.