There's a frustrating pattern anyone who's used a VPN or a private gateway knows: web pages and downloads work perfectly, and then a voice call drops, a video meeting won't connect, or a call quality goes to pieces the moment the tunnel is on. You end up turning the tunnel off for calls and back on afterwards — which rather defeats the point.

That's not bad luck. It's a technical split. Most of the web runs on one kind of network traffic (TCP), which tunnels carry easily. But real-time things — voice, video, Teams and other calls, games — run on a different kind (UDP), which most tunnels drop, block, or quietly degrade. Reach now carries UDP too, so the apps that used to be the first casualty of turning Reach on can stay on with it.

Why it's trickier than "just add UDP"

There's no single way to carry UDP that's fast, reliable, and works on hostile networks all at once. So rather than pick one and hope, Reach picks the right route for each connection:

  • Straight out, no detour for anything on your local network and, by default, for live call media — because for a voice or video call, the shortest path keeps the quality up.
  • A fast modern tunnel where the network allows it.
  • A disguised path that looks like ordinary web traffic where the network is restrictive and would otherwise block it.

You don't manage any of this. Reach sorts each connection into the right lane automatically — one call can go direct while something else is routed — and if you've asked Reach to stay low-profile, it leans on the path that's hardest to block.

What this means for your business

  • Stop toggling the tunnel for calls. Keep Reach on through your meetings and calls instead of flicking it off and on around them.
  • Remote and travelling staff keep working. The real-time tools your team relies on — meetings, calls, collaboration apps — route through Reach rather than around it.
  • One setup, fewer exceptions. Less "turn it off for this, back on for that," which is exactly the kind of fiddly workaround small teams don't have time for.

Where it works today — straight version

We'd rather tell you the limits up front than have you discover them:

  • Desktop now; mobile is on the way. The Reach desktop app carries the full real-time path today. The phone version needs some deeper plumbing we're still building — it's in progress, not done.
  • Rolling out across our gateways. The capability is live on most of our exit locations, not yet every single one. Where a particular location can't carry it, Reach quietly falls back rather than failing — you won't get a dead end.
  • Mainland China is a special case. The fast modern route is throttled there by the national firewall, so inside China Reach relies on the disguised path instead. It's handled automatically — worth knowing if that's where your people are.

None of those caveats change the headline: the traffic that tunnels normally break — your calls, meetings and real-time apps — now has a way through Reach, and Reach does the work of choosing the best route so you don't have to think about it.

Reach UDP is built into the TYO Reach desktop app. Already using Reach? Update to the latest version. New to it? Start here.