Way much slower than zerotier

1

I was using zerotier before, and start to use tailscale these days. I quickly realized that tailscale is much slower than zerotier in p2p connection(very hard to have a direct connection). tailscale used relay at the most of time. but zerotier always can direct connect successfully at the first second.

Here is some info of my network status.
Device A:

$ tailscale netcheck

Report:
        * UDP: true
        * IPv4: yes, **masked**
        * IPv6: yes, **masked**
        * MappingVariesByDestIP: false
        * HairPinning: false
        * PortMapping: UPnP, NAT-PMP, PCP
        * Nearest DERP: Tokyo
        * DERP latency:
                - tok: 98ms    (Tokyo)
                - syd: 159.1ms (Sydney)
                - lhr: 187.1ms (London)

$ tailscale ping -verbose device-b
lookup "**masked**" => "**masked**"
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 1.842s
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 1.365s
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 619ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 708ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 356ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 756ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 362ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 1.049s
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 364ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 358ms

Device B:

$ tailscale netcheck

Report:
        * UDP: true
        * IPv4: yes, **masked**
        * IPv6: no
        * MappingVariesByDestIP: false
        * HairPinning: false
        * PortMapping: UPnP
        * Nearest DERP: San Francisco
        * DERP latency:
                - sfo: 151.5ms (San Francisco)
                - tok: 168.1ms (Tokyo)
                - dfw: 168.3ms (Dallas)

$ tailscale ping -verbose device-a
lookup "**masked**" => "**masked**"
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 1.113s
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 360ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 1.499s
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 1.141s
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 365ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 407ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 369ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 361ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(sfo) in 604ms
pong from **masked** (**masked**) via DERP(tok) in 253ms

device A is behind one NAT and have a working UPnP, it should be able to connect directly.

I also tried to ping another device continuously. sometimes the tailscale can make direct connection after hundreds of pings, sometimes it will require thousands of pings.

4

Hello!

Usually people find tailscale is faster, and it definitely should be getting a direct connection, but depending on your firewall settings it might have had to fall back to a relay. Please email your tailscale IPs and the time it happened to support@tailscale.com and we can help you diagnose the problem.