You don't need a Tailscale exit node just to reach devices on your home network

Published Oct 31, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT His love of PCs and their components was born out of trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the family computer. Tinkering with his own build at age 10 turned into building PCs for friends and family, fostering a passion that would ultimately take shape as a career path. Besides being the first call for tech support for those close to him, Ty is a computer science student, with his focus being cloud computing and networking. He also competed in semi-pro Counter-Strike for 8 years, making him intimately familiar with everything to do with peripherals. Tailscale feels like magic when you first start using it. You install it on your phone and desktop, and connecting the two from anywhere feels almost too easy, but when you try and open a web interface for a service hosted on your NAS, or check a home security camera away from home and nothing loads. One of the first fixes that's commonly thrown around is using exit nodes, and while they might work, they're probably not actually what you're looking for. Tailscale exit nodes are about internet traffic Tailscale is an overlay network first When you first set up Tailscale and add devices, it acts as an overlay network. It connects these devices running Tailscale to each other and leaves everything else alone, meaning your browsing, streaming, and app traffic still goes out whatever internet connection you're on. It's why your phone that's connected to your tailnet can reach the other devices on it but not the printer that isn't apart of that network. An exit node changes how your internet traffic leaves your device, not necessarily which home devices it can reach. When you use a device as an exit node, your device will send all of its traffic through that machine, so websites and apps will see your home IP address instead of whatever network is actually giving you connection to the internet. In practice it works similarly to a traditional VPN with a server you own, which can absolutely be useful, but it doesn't aim your connection to the devices in your home that aren't part of your tailnet. Subnet routing is what you're looking for Tailscale has this functionality built-in, too If you're trying to reach devices on your home LAN, subnet routers are the better way to do it. A lot of users mistake the "Allow local network access" toggle for an exit node for a switch that allows them to access their home LAN, but that switch affects the network your device is currently on, like the coffee shop or hotel Wi-Fi. A subnet router is a device on your tailnet that advertises a range of local addresses—the normal 192.168.x.x type—and forwards traffic to that range for everything else in your tailnet. This lets Tailscale reach devices that don't run Tailscale without changing the way your internet traffic is routed. This is obviously good for devices that you haven't installed Tailscale on, but it's the perfect solution for devices that can't install it at all, like a printer. Setup only takes a few minutes: you will need a device on your network that will always be on, like a Raspberry Pi or a small Linux VM or LXC. You can run Tailscale on it with the --advertise-routes flag with your home subnet, and then you approve the route in your Tailscale admin console. Windows, macOS, iOS and Android clienets will pick up the new route automatically. For Linux, it needs the --accept-routes flag before it can use the routes other devices advertise. A small pitfall that's worth looking out for is which local address space your router uses. For most people this will be the standard 192.168.0.x space, but if your home LAN and network your connecting from both use that same space, your device won't be able to tell local addresses from remote ones. If you're setting this up, moving your home network to a less common range does prevent headaches like this later. Sometimes you don't need either Exit nodes and subnet routers might be overkill Before setting up a subnet router, it's worth checking to see if the device you want to reach can run Tailscale itself. If it can, installing it directly is just the cleanest option. Each device gets its own address and MagicDNS name, which is a lot simpler to work with than multiple subnets. Tailscale also runs natively on a surprising number of devices. It offers official apps for Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, Unraid, and more. If it's a desktop or it can run Linux, you're pretty much good to go. What to actually use exit nodes for They're very useful in specific circumstances When traveling or working remote, exit nodes can come in handy. On untrusted networks, routing everything through your home network can be a sensible precaution, but using them as a way to get around geolocation restrictions is another underrated use case. For services that only work in your country of origin, like banking or streaming, an exit node does that for you. And for someone brand new to Tailscale, picking an exit node from a menu is undeniably easier than advertising routes and approving them in a web console. Accessing your home network doesn't have to be complicated If Tailscale is already connecting your phone and computer, you're most of the way there. Installing it directly on the devices you need access to should be primary method, but for something like a printer or smart home device that can't run it natively, subnet routing is the next best thing. Exit nodes are best saved for when you want your traffic to look like it's coming from home.