Tailscale Reliability and Alternatives? Should I Switch?

I've been on Tailscale for the past year or so, and while it generally works quite well, I've noticed lately that it seems less reliable. What that often means for me is that even when sitting 2ft from my server at home and on LAN, DNS queries can seem to get lost in a black hole, or things just suddenly get slow for no reason. I'll find myself having to reload something for no good reason. Disabling TS usually fixes it instantly and improves response time.

This is just using standard overlay mode, no exit node. I use MagicDNS to allow adblocking over 5G.

I've also noticed that the Android app seems to fuss about relay server issues more often than I'd expect, and not during situations when it should (read: no UDP or related blocks).

I'm curious others' experiences and if you moved to something like Headscale, or did you just stay put? Again, I'm generally happy with it, but I've also got 2 VPS servers that can function as relays, plus my own WAN, etc.

One consideration is that I use Tailscale w/ ACL controls to fetch media and data for my Plex and Seerr instances that are exposed to WAN -- 2 strict routes to each service's IP:port. I'd want to maintain that functionality/setup.

Is this worth pursuing? I've got just plain old WireGuard +WGDashboard as a backup for remote LAN access, but it's not exactly an attractive solution and requires addt'l config to get an overlay setup done.

I know, I'm being fussy. If I need to pipe down tell me to pipe down 😆.

Thanks!!!

https://redd.it/1x0t1yq
@r_SelfHosted