Tailscale
A private network that puts your machine and your phone in the same address space, with no port opened on your router and no VPN box to run. You drop the client on each device, sign in with the same account, and every device gets a stable address the others can reach from any network. Traffic is encrypted between devices and nothing is published to the open internet, so a machine outside your network has nothing to scan. The personal tier is free.
Strengths
- No port opened on your router: your machine stays invisible from outside your own network
- Stable addresses between devices, so your access survives switching wifi or carrier
- Set up once then forgotten, which is exactly the behaviour this layer should have
Limitations
- A third-party service coordinates your devices: it knows they exist and when they talk, if not what they say
- Default access rules are permissive between your own devices, to tighten before any sharing
- The self-hosted alternative exists but hands you a server to maintain, which the paid service was avoiding
Best for
- Taking back control of a long-running agent on a machine left at home
- Reaching a locally running service from another device without publishing it to the internet