Tutorial: Connect Two Devices

In this tutorial you’ll connect your laptop and a second machine so they can reach each other directly over a private encrypted connection.

Time: about 10 minutes Difficulty: beginner

What you’ll need

A Rabtly account at app.rabtly.cloud
Two machines with internet access (any combination of macOS, Linux, Windows)
An enrollment token from Settings → Access Tokens in the dashboard

Steps

Install Rabtly on machine 1 (your laptop)


curl -fsSL https://dl.rabtly.cloud/install.sh | sh

On Windows, install with Scoop: scoop bucket add rabtly https://github.com/rabtly/scoop-rabtly; scoop install rabtly

Connect machine 1


rabtly login
sudo rabtly up --token enrt_...

Install Rabtly on machine 2

Run the same install command on the second machine.

Connect machine 2


rabtly login
sudo rabtly up --token enrt_...

Check the dashboard

Go to the dashboard → Devices. Both devices should appear with a green Online badge and private IP addresses like 100.64.0.1 and 100.64.0.2.

Ping across the tunnel

On your laptop, ping the second machine using its Rabtly IP:


ping 100.64.0.2

You should see replies. The two devices are now talking directly over an encrypted tunnel.

Try SSH (optional)

If the second machine has SSH enabled, you can connect to it using its Rabtly IP:


ssh user@100.64.0.2

This works even if the machine is behind a firewall or NAT — Rabtly handles the connection automatically.

Rabtly IPs always start with 100.64.. Find each device’s IP on the Devices page in the dashboard.

What’s happening?

Both devices connected to Rabtly and each received a private IP address.
Rabtly exchanged the encrypted keys between them.
They established a direct encrypted tunnel.
If a direct connection isn’t possible (strict firewall), traffic automatically routes through Rabtly’s relay — no action needed from you.

Next steps

Remote access to your home →Set up a team network →