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Connecting to remote PLC/IPC with Tailscale

· 4 min read
KD Puvvadi
KD Puvvadi
Maintainer of eData

Have you ever tried to connect to support you client by connecting their machinery by remoting into their PC/Laptop with anydesk/Teamviewer? It's always pain. You might have faced a few problems. Such as Low display quality, slow internet speed and required IDE such as TIA portal, SoMachine, DIAStudio, Sysmac Studio and others with licensing issues.

tailscale

Ewon Solved these issues by allowing you connect to the PLC with simple VPN but pricing is big factor. It's cheap. Not everyone can afford it. On top of that connection drops are big problem.

[Tailscale])(https://tailscale.com/) solves most of those issues by allowing you to simply connecting directly to your controller.

tailscale can be used to connect to the remote machines or robots via secure VPN connection. It supports following protocols and few more

  • EtherNet/IP
  • TCP/IP
  • UDP

Getting Started​

Create a free account on the tailscale by visiting Getting Started page. After account setup completed, You need to install application on the remote pc and your pc to connect.

After install, login to the device by selecting login from the tray icon.

Connected Machine

How tailscale works​

tailscale runs one pc in the same network you want to connect to and uses that pc as an exit node. Then it routes all your traffic through that node & through the subnet you are using to connect to PLC, Motion controller, HMI or any other device.

For example Omron run their traffic through 192.168.250.0.0/24 subnet. That starts from 192.168.250.0 to 192.168.250.255.

tailscale subnets

Exit Node​

First we need to advertise the device as Exit Node. To do that, Right click on the tailscale icon on the system tray and select Exit Node and select Run Exit Node. This pops up a prompt Are sure you want to run an Exit Node?. Click on Yes to allow the pc to run as an Exit Node.

This will be showed in the Admin Console.

Exit node in console

Subnets​

To be able to route the traffic, tailscale needs to know the subnet it needs to route the traffic through.

To set the subnets, open powershell and run the following.

tailscale up --advertise-routes=192.168.0.0/24,192.168.250.0/24 --reset

After above subnet icon should be available on the Console.

tailscale advertise routes

note

Make sure to replace the subnet with your required one. Add them after comma. If your plc IP is 192.168.123.1 set subnet as 192.168.123.0/24.

Enable Exit Node & Subnet​

Once Exit Node and Subnets are enabled, you need approve those from the Admin Console.

Click on three dotted menu icon and select Edit Route Settings.

Edit route Settings menu

Click on Approve all under subnet settings and turn on Use as Exit Node.

Approve subnets and Use Exit note

Preferences​

Select the settings in the preferences and click on yes if prompted based on your preferences.

Tailscale preferences

Connecting​

Once the setup on the remote PC is done, Login to your PC and connect to the remote PC under Exit Node.

Try pinging the controller

$ ping 192.168.250.1

Pinging 192.168.250.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.250.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.250.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.250.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=255
Reply from 192.168.250.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for 192.168.250.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 2ms, Maximum = 4ms, Average = 3ms
note

Try connecting to the controller now and if the IDE has use VPN option, Make sure to select it. It might help with pocket drops in slow or spotty network condition.