ZeroTierOne
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zerotier
After inactive time, ping and RDP to remote Windows computer do not work via Zerotier
Zerotier Windows client version: 1.12.2
If there is no connection to the Windows computer for a long time (more than 6 hours), the connection is lost through Zerotier. Neither ping nor RDP works. This is solved by connecting with Teamviewer, AnyDesk or OpenVPN to the remote computer. As a connection is established with another program, Zerotier starts pinging and RDP. It feels like Zerotier falls asleep and then suddenly wakes up. At the same time, ping to RDP to this computer works on the local network, but does not work on the Zerotier network. Zerotier is just starting to work by connecting to the computer in a different way. This has been observed on several different Windows 10 computers.
I have this same issue. Sometimes trying RDP a few times does get through but it's not guaranteed.
A couple of ideas:
Do you know if the target machine is actually "awake" (i.e., not in a power-saving mode) when you attempt to connect after a long idle time? Also, do you have port forwarding configured for any of the services you mentioned?
ZeroTier works through firewalls directly, without having a to configure them to allow remote access. Unfortunately, that lack of explicit port forwarding means that "Wake-on-LAN" and other mechanisms that can activate a remote host once it's powered down won't work remotely after the ZeroTier connection(s) age out of the firewall state.
There are certainly other ways that a particular host can drop from a ZeroTier network because of upstream connectivity interruptions, but the agent doesn't "go to sleep" or otherwise intentionally refuse connections from authorized peers.
Beyond that, it's a little hard to know specifically what might be impacting you in this case without more information...which will be hard to capture w/o an active connection to the remote machine.
If you do find yourself with an active RDP session but without direct ZeroTier connectivity, you could run zerotier-cli dump and ipconfig on it and attach the results here.
My experience is that I can rdp to the same machine from another machine on the same lan but not through zt.
A reboot or at least a log off of the user usually fixes it. But then again that's usually done via Anydesk or from another machine on the same lan.