Is peer relay essentially a custom relay which was previously available, except now it’s one command?

So it runs a STUN server or similar, for discovery and relaying.

Peer relays are a bit different from our previously available Custom DERP servers. While the custom DERPs do relay traffic, they also require a bunch of configuration and management for their other jobs and they open up availability concerns that are pretty tough for our average customer.

Conversely Peer Relays are built on top of the shoulders of DERP. For example, they don't need to do peer discovery set connections up end to end - instead connections are brokered via our DERP fleet and then in a sense "upgraded" to an available Peer Relay or Direct connection. Because of that they're super lightweight and much easier to deploy + manage. And, they scale horizontally so you can deploy many peer relays across your network, and they're resilient to downtime (we'll just fall back to DERP).

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shj2105 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I’m so confused. What is the difference between a peer relay and a DERP server that is self hosted?

The issue I have is I’m trying to connect two devices where one is behind a CGNAT that always causes the connection to be relayed even though the other one is not behind a cgnat with proper port forwarding. Would a peer relay solve this but is it like a DERp where I have to host it on a VPS separate from my existing two networks or is this something different where I can host the peer relay on the network not behind a CGNAT and somehow it will link the two networks through it?

	▲	kabirx 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You should be able to stand up a peer relay on an existing tailscale device - so your proposal is correct! Try setting one of the devices up as a peer relay per the docs here: https://tailscale.com/docs/features/peer-relay