No access by Tailscale to WiFi behind GL-MT3000

Technical Support for Routers VPN, DNS, Leaks
1

I am not a very tech savyy person, so apologies for the basic questions - but after days of messing with the setup myself I need to reach out to the community for some help.
For a remote telescope/camera rig I am trying to establish a connection from home that lets me control the whole setup. Heart of the rig is the ASIAir, which is a raspberry pi based device that can control the imaging hardware. The device has 2 modes, standard (uses its own WiFi) and station (dials into an existing WiFi as a client) - there is a dedicated app on my android phone which establishes connection.

Here is a basic graphic of the setup:

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The GL-MT3000 uses an iPhone hotspot for internet connection. At the same time, the ASIAir connects to the WiFi_Beryl. I have installed Tailscale on the GL-MT3000 as well as my Android phone, and I do see both online in the Tailscale 'Machines' section - where for the GL-MT3000 all available subnet routes are approved. I also see the ASIair client connected in the router's admin panel. Tailscale on the GL-MT3000 is configured like this:

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Regardless, the ASIAir does not show up in the app on my android device with active Tailscale. If by test I connect my android device to WiFi_Beryl instead onsite, it does show up though.

A second test was to connect both GL-MT3000 and ASIAir to WiFi_iPhone, but this did not work either.

A third test was to use GL-MT3000 in tethering mode, establish a USB connection to the iPhone and then try again but also to no avail.

A forth test was to just connect GL-MT3000/ASIAir to my home WiFi at home, deactivate WiFi on my android to simulate access from 'outside'. This was to rule out any issue regarding the iPhone hotspot, as I have read iPhone hotspots can be quite restrictive. The result was the same, and it suggests at least the iPhone not being responsible for the blockage.

So far I have not dived deeper into actual configuration changes on a terminal/power shell level, but hope this is what is the missing link to make this work.

I'd be very grateful for some advice on how to proceed. For starters, although this is probably a very naive question: how do I even access the terminal view I do see in some of the articles? I know how to access it on my PC but the configuration to be changed is on the GL-MT3000 itself, so I am assuming there is a way for open a terminal directly from the admin panel.

2

Doesn't the raspberry pi need tailscale installed to it?

3

I cannot access the raspberry pi to install anything on it - it is a closed system.

4

Is it possible the app on the phone needs to be on same lan as the device because of how it looks for it? Are you able to define the devices IP in the app or does it just find it?. Some apps use MDNS to find things on a lan, which wont traverse routed subnets.

1 Like
5

Thanks! Your comment pointed me into the right direction. The app actually had a somewhat hidden option to look for an IP - I had not seen that first and was under the impression the network just has to appear and if not nothing can be done.
The admin panel shows the IP under 'clients' (192.168.8.226), so I could just copy/paste this and now the app can indeed reach the device!

Now only one minor point is left: will this IP remain or will the Beryl assign a new IP each time? If the latter is true, is there a way to force this specific IP to be reused?

6

There will be an option in the Beryl to statically assign the same IP address to the device every time it sees it. It should be pretty obvious in the Beryl’s settings. On my Flint2 it’s under LAN, Address Reservation.

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7

Appreciate the feedback! I will look into the settings.

8

I need to chime in on the ip assignment. Just because you have it set to assign a specific ip it doesn't mean it will get that ip. The only way to assure the same ip is to disable dhcp but as you have no control over the raspberry pi you can't set it to ask for a static ip and if the router is static it won't issue addresses unless it's requested..

If the pi is the only device on the router it would be best to shorten the dhcp pool to a few available addresses and then it's more likely the pi will retain the same address across reboots.

I advise you keep the gli app handy and make a note of the mac address of the pi so you can manage your network when it falls over.

1 Like
9

That's a good point. I will look into this and see if I can at least shorten the DHCP pool. There is one more device that would connect occasionally - my Android phone.

Since this is not a permanent setup, but done on a night-to-night basis, I assume though that even if the IP is changed I should be able to quickly retrieve it by opening the Admin Panel in a browser and check in the 'clients' section which IP was assigned to the device. This should at least stay for the duration of the session. It would not take more than 1-2 extra minutes, but of course it would be less convenient than not having to worry about it repeatedly.