A while back I posted a thread asking for some help around Cloudflare workers and socks5 proxys as I was preparing to travel to ch!na and wanted to see if there was a better way to VPN out past the great firewall. Sadly, that thread died a quick death. In the background I had a red hot go at setting up a socks5 proxy using a cloudflare worker but found it was beyond me and not quite what I needed, or both. Original Post
In preparation to leave for ch!na I needed to find a solution that would let me provide un-restricted internet access to my wife’s laptop which can not have any software installed on it as it is managed by her work so a simple VPN subscription would not do.
I have been using a GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) travel router which is logged into my tailscale and I have rented a VPS (Hostinger, with a server in India) to act as an exit node as my home internet is very very sad (Australia NBN, with an upload of 20Mbs). Along with Tailscale plumbed into the router I have also had good success with Mulvad VPN for my devices. Although it can be sketchy at times.
So, what have I found having used tailscale for 3 weeks here. IT WORKS!
The main takeaway I think for someone looking for such a solution is the fact that tailscale creates a PtP connection between devices meaning that any firewall trying to actively block certain IP address will most likely miss your single device to device connection, and as an added benefit, although VERY slow and basically unusable, I was able to kinda access SMB and web servers on my home network.
Using the GL.iNet router has also got some great pros and a few cons. First with the cons. Some of the software, especially around the VPN and Tailscale are clearly still in beta, so whilst from the easy to use menu it looks easy to setup, there are a few little quirks that slow things down a bit. (Reach out if you get stuck with one of these!)
Once up and running though, I found adding a 512GB USB to the USB port of the router game me nice speedy access to a local file server where I stored media which could be viewed from any device either on my tailscale network or connected locally to the WIFI/LAN. This was particularly handy when I forgot to pack the router and left it running at our house and went to stay at a family members house. We were still able to access and watch all the media from the device on my ipad and laptop as they have tailscale installed.
And that is about it gang, I am here for another 6 days now, so if anyone has any burning questions about getting and staying connected when travelling to a restrictive country or areas, reply to this post so everyone can benefit from the question/answer. I will do my best to get back to any questions before I head back down under.
Thanks for reading my posts!
PAWS