Hey everyone. This is probably a super noob question, but I’m very much just an amateur when it comes to self-hosting.

I host several services that I access locally through 192.whatever:####, and when I occasionally need remote access, I use Tailscale and access through 100.whatever: ####. The duplicate bookmarks is mildly annoying though.

Can I just buy a personal domain, and have all my services be coolname.com:#### for both local and Tailscale access? Is that as simple a process as I want it to be?

Edit: I appreciate all the comments and I’ll probably just use Tailacale’s MagicDNS for simplicity, but one or my (unwritten, my bad) goals was to have one URL that works locally and remotely, regardless of Tailscale. I don’t leave Tailscale constantly connected because it overheats my phone (which already has terrible battery life).

  • stratself@lemdro.idEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    You could do that, but you’ll need to employ some kind of DNS tuning so that:

    • If you query for the domain from the LAN range, it responds with 192.whatever, and
    • If you query for the domain from the Tailscale range, it responds with 100.64.whatever

    The terminology for this is “split DNS” or “split horizon”. You can do this by selfhosting two DNS servers - one for the LAN and one for the Tailnet - with different records for the domain. You can selfhost the same DNS server on both the LAN and the Tailnet, and configure some rules so it answers differently based on the querant’s IP. Found this guide for Pi-hole. Technitium also works for this with its Split DNS app, but it’s a steeper learning curve.

    Furthermore, if you don’t wanna pay for a domain, just use one of the free dynamic DNS services. https://afraid.org/ is one of them.

    Alternatively, why not always connect to the Tailscale address in the first place? Tailscale probably run as an always-on VPN on your client device anyways, and you can reuse the address in the same LAN.