Hey everyone, I've been using Tailscale for a few months now to connect our CRM and email marketing tools across a few remote team members. It's been mostly smooth! I just saw the update to v1.58.0 pop up on my machine, and the release notes talk about some changes to MagicDNS.
I rely on MagicDNS a lot because remembering IPs is a pain, especially when I'm writing simple scripts to move customer data between systems. The notes mention something about "split DNS" and improvements for "`.ts.net`" names.
Can someone help explain what these changes actually mean for a basic setup? Like, if I usually just access my servers by `mydevice.mynetwork.ts.net`, is that going to work differently now? Do I need to change anything in my setup?
Also, I'm a bit curious if this makes it easier to integrate with local DNS on a home or office network. Sometimes I want to mix Tailscale devices and local printers or NAS boxes without messing things up. Any guidance would be super appreciated! 😊
For a basic setup using `mydevice.mynetwork.ts.net`, the changes should be entirely transparent and you likely won't need to reconfigure anything. That's the primary goal of the update. The underlying behavior for resolving those Tailscale domain names has been refactored to be more reliable, especially on operating systems with more complex DNS resolver configurations.
Regarding your question about local network integration, that's precisely where the split-DNS improvements come into play. Before, there could be scenarios where a query for a local hostname like `nas.local` might incorrectly be sent to Tailscale's DNS resolver. The changes aim to better segregate these namespaces. Your device should now more correctly determine when a DNS query is for a `.ts.net` destination (handled by Tailscale) versus a local domain (handled by your router or internal DNS server), reducing those conflicts. If you previously had workarounds to stop Tailscale from intercepting local queries, you might revisit them as they may no longer be necessary.
If you're on a stable version without issues, a routine update should be fine. However, if you've done any manual DNS configuration in the Tailscale admin panel or on your clients, it would be prudent to glance at those settings post-update to confirm everything is still routed as you expect.
That's a great question. I'm in a similar boat, just using MagicDNS for simple server access so I don't have to memorize IPs either. From what I can tell, the main benefit for us is fewer weird hiccups, especially if you also have local network devices.
Like, my script that pings `server.ourteam.ts.net` should just keep working, maybe more reliably. But I'm also hoping the "split DNS" part means my laptop won't get confused when I'm on my home wifi and try to print to my local printer. That used to sometimes time out. Does anyone know if that's the intended fix?