Tailscale has announced the general availability of Tailscale Peer Relays, a production-ready solution for high-throughput relaying in distributed networks. The feature enables customer-deployed relays that can run on any Tailscale node, providing a tailnet-native alternative to the existing DERP relay infrastructure.

Since its beta release, Peer Relays have undergone significant improvements in performance and reliability. The system now achieves vertical scaling boosts that dramatically improve throughput when multiple clients forward traffic through a single relay. These enhancements include more optimal interface selection, reduced lock contention, and traffic distribution across multiple UDP sockets, delivering performance much closer to true mesh networking even when direct peer-to-peer connections aren't possible.

The feature also addresses restrictive cloud environments through static endpoint integration. Using the `--relay-server-static-endpoints` flag, peer relays can advertise fixed IP:port pairs to the tailnet, enabling deployments behind infrastructure like AWS Network Load Balancers. This capability allows organizations to replace subnet routers with full-mesh deployments while maintaining core Tailscale features like SSH and MagicDNS. Additionally, Peer Relays now offer improved auditability through integration with tailscale ping and expose metrics like `tailscaled_peer_relay_forwarded_packets_total` for monitoring systems.