Tutorial: Set Up a Team Network

This tutorial shows you how to create a private network for your team so everyone can reach internal tools, databases, and services without exposing them to the internet.

Time: 20 minutes Difficulty: beginner–intermediate

The scenario

Your team has:

A staging server in the cloud
A database server
A few developers who need access

You want developers to connect their laptops and reach these resources directly, without the servers being publicly accessible.

Steps

Create a Rabtly account

Go to app.rabtly.cloud and sign up. During onboarding, click Create network and name it for your team (e.g. “Acme Engineering”).

Get an enrollment token

In the dashboard, go to Settings → Access Tokens and create a token. You’ll use this to connect all your servers.

Connect your servers

On each server (staging, database, etc.), install Rabtly, then connect it with a descriptive name using rabtly up --name:


curl -fsSL https://dl.rabtly.cloud/install.sh | sh
sudo rabtly up --token enrt_... --name staging


# on the database server
sudo rabtly up --token enrt_... --name database

By default a device takes its system hostname; --name overrides it so servers are easy to tell apart in the dashboard.

Invite your team members

In the dashboard → Network Settings → Members, send invite links to each developer. They’ll create accounts and join your network.

Each developer connects their laptop

After accepting the invite, each developer installs Rabtly and connects:


curl -fsSL https://dl.rabtly.cloud/install.sh | sh
rabtly login
sudo rabtly up --token enrt_...

Everyone can now reach the servers

From any developer’s laptop:


# Connect to the staging server
ssh deploy@100.64.0.2
 
# Connect to the database (via its Rabtly IP)
psql -h 100.64.0.3 -U myapp mydb

The database server never needs a public port. Only devices on your Rabtly network can reach it.

Controlling access (optional)

By default, all devices in a network can reach each other (they share the default group). If you want finer control — for example, only letting the app server reach the database — use Access Control.

Go to the dashboard → Access Control, sort your devices into groups (e.g. servers, database, laptops), then connect groups on the Map tab. Because Rabtly is default-deny, you only describe what’s allowed:

laptops → staging on any port
app → database on TCP 5432
everything else is blocked automatically

See the Access Control tutorial for a full walkthrough.

Use networks to isolate environments. For example, keep a production network and a staging network — devices in production can’t see devices in staging at all.

Onboarding new team members

When someone joins:

Send them an invite link from the dashboard
They accept and create an account
They install Rabtly on their laptop and connect
They’re on the network immediately — no IT helpdesk needed