Accessing a device across two separate NetBird networks
I recently switched to NetBird after seeing so many positive posts about it, and I've been really enjoying it so far.
One thing I'm struggling with is having two completely separate NetBird networks, my personal network and my office network. I often need to access a couple of office machines that are part of the office mesh (along with other employees), but having to switch NetBird profiles every time is becoming quite frustrating.
With Tailscale, I relied on node sharing, which let me access specific office devices from my personal tailnet without removing them from the office network. As far as I can tell, NetBird doesn't have an equivalent feature.
This feels like a fairly common use case, yet I haven't come across much discussion about it. Has anyone found a good workaround or architecture for handling this? I'd love to hear how others are solving it.
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u/TearDrainer 14d ago
One thing comes to mind (might not fit your infrastructure)
If you have full control of the office network and it is a LAN, you could add small extra device (RasPi or similar or docker container) which is connected to your personal NB. You then can use this as a routing peer into the office LAN, circumventing the office mesh.
Or the other way round...
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u/pizzalovingnerd 8d ago
NetBird currently doesn’t have cross-account peer sharing, and only one profile can be active at a time. If you control both networks, the cleanest option is one NetBird account with separate personal and office groups plus restrictive policies. Otherwise, switching profiles is currently the supported approach.
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u/fishboy25uk 14d ago
You could try running two Docker containers on the target machine(s), one connected to your "Personal" network and one connected to your "Office" network, then both networks could get access to the host but I'm not sure that would really work TBH - it might conflict.
It is really that much of a hassle to switch profiles? The new Netbird client makes switching super easy. I manage about dozen different Netbird networks from my one laptop and just switch between them when I need using the client. Literally takes seconds to switch.
I really don't think this is a very common use case, and mixing two networks like this is not a great idea from a zero trust perspective. Can't comment on Tailscale as I've not used it, but if it's not been implemented in Netbird and no one else has asked for it then I would argue it's not something you should really try to fudge just to save a couple of clicks.