I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node

Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by MysticOracle on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @08:01PM (#47595085)

Tailscale tangential use case! :)

I was looking for remote access software to help family with their PC and came across RustDesk(https://rustdesk.com/) but it needs a server. Found out it can work without a server if you have Tailscale installed. No fees for any of this and works on many platforms.

Tutorial for Rustdesk + Tailscale setup for remote desktop access: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27apZcZrwks

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by stonecharioteer on Tuesday March 31, 2026 @11:24PM (#47596424)

Oh lovely. How is your experience with RustDesk? Is it better than VNC?

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by raihansaputra on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @01:13AM (#47597070)

my experience with RustDesk + Tailscale is really good. when i only needed windows remote devices, the Windows Remote Desktop over Tailscale is great. I used RustDesk for access to macOS and Android devices (all over Tailscale) and works great too. No complaints really. Much less hassle to setup than Parsec (latency isn't as good though), and way snappier than AnyDesk through their network. Great tool enabled by Tailscale.

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by znnajdla on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @01:31AM (#47597168)

+1 for RustDesk over Tailscale. It works even better than Screens for macOS.

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by KronisLV on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @05:24AM (#47598650)

Been using it for a while, older versions had memory leaks with multiple monitors (or virtual monitors too), nowadays seems better.

Supports various video encoders, various bitrate settings, allows sharing clipboard (though still has an annoying bug where sometimes copying something new into the clipboard doesn't work and only 2nd attempt works) and the relay is also easy to setup and host, in addition to it being free!

Honestly my favorite software in this space since RealVNC decided they want to be greedy (and since VNC / RDP kinda sucks in my experience).

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by justsomehnguy on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @06:04AM (#47598890)

> Is it better than VNC?

It's the year 2026 out there. Anything is better than VNC.

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by theturtletalks on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @01:48AM (#47597258)

Yes I figured this out too, you can actually put any IP address you want in the code field for RustDesk, it doesn’t have to be a RustDesk code only.

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by viccis on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @01:54AM (#47597299)

Little tip for anyone who decides to try this:

You need to enable IP access on the device you intend to connect to. It's under the security settings in RustDesk.

I've been playing around with it. The iOS RustDesk app is nice, and I've been controlling my Mac Mini at home using my iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard, and it's shockingly smooth!

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by prox on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @03:18AM (#47597883)

How secure is all this? Not really into networking and I always wondered if this has any risks.

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by viccis on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @04:08AM (#47598185)

If you're just connecting over Tailscale and your machine is otherwise not exposing the (configurable) port to the internet, it's fine as far as I know. Set up firewall entries if you are concerned.

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by jbverschoor on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @02:23AM (#47597509)

How does it compare to jump desktop

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Re:I Traced My Traffic Through a Home Tailscale Exit Node by sheepscreek on Wednesday April 01, 2026 @03:30PM (#47605427)

The only other thing I can add is - with very little configuration, you can allow direct routing to your entire local lan. If anyone is interested, I’ll document it. I’ve set it up in an lxc container on my Proxmox home server and am very happy with it. Allows direct access to all my VMs on the go!

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