Tailscale Subnet routers
Published on Jan 24, 2026
Recently I had the use case that I needed to access a device which was located in the local network of my home A, from my computer located in the home B. If this would be a server or some kind of computer where I could install the Tailscale client that would be easily solvable.
In this case it was a UniFi webcam (Upcoming blogpost alert!) that I needed to access from the other network. The only Tailscale node I had in the network of home A was an Apple TV running Tailscale. I was investigating how I could use this as some kind of "jumpbox" into the network and learned about a Tailscale feature I wasn't familiar with: Subnet routers
In short, after you enable it (A checkbox in the Tailscale client on the Apple TV in this case) you can reach IPs distributed by the DHCP server in the network at home A, just like if they would be connected to your local network in home B. This doesn't just apply to devices running Tailscale clients, but every device (Webcam, light bulbs etc.).
The only requirement is that the networks don't overlap. That makes sense, so that if I run "ping 192.168.0.2" while being connected to home B's network it's clear which one to reach.
- Home A: 192.168.0.*
- Home B: 192.168.1.*
That there's a Tailscale app for tvOS was surprising when I first found out about it when I started with Tailscale, but it has enabled a lot of great use cases like a personal residential proxy and now a Tailscale jumpbox without running a server with fans and spinning disks.