Encountered an unusual problem with TailScale on Synology equipment.
Encountered an unusual problem with TailScale on Synology equipment.
Hello everyone. Introduction: I see myself as someone with a decent level of experience (I've grown over time), but I'm not very experienced with the technical sides of networking or backup/sync stuff. I don’t have formal training in computing. Mostly, I’ve learned on my own through the many helpful people online who shared their skills kindly. For those around me, I’m often the go-to person when something goes wrong with a computer. There’s definitely a sense of self-doubt involved... I began using Synology years back because I was comfortable with its GUI. I’m not very confident with command-line tools, though I use them occasionally (usually when no other choice exists). I’m not very familiar with TailScale either—I don’t grasp terms like “Tailnet,” “route,” or “exit node” and I wasn’t sure if they were even needed for my needs.
Question: I run into an odd problem when trying to switch between Synology devices using TailScale. Could you walk me through the setup details? I have five NAS units: four at home and one at work. Let’s label them:
A) My main NAS at home – stores all files
B) Secondary NAS at home – mainly for media, can be re-downloaded if lost
C) Backup NAS at home – backs up A) and some of B’s content
D) Small spare NAS at home – used mostly for tests/experiments
E) Backup NAS at work – backs up A) and part of B’s content
I use Synology Hyper Backup for all backup tasks. All NASes run DSM 7.1 or 7.2, and the latest TailScale version is installed. The work NAS is behind a firewall I don’t control. Recently, I lost easy external access (no public IPs). So I turned to TailScale to back up A) and some of B’s content onto E). I also installed it on my laptop for remote management from home.
Weekly backups were set up (A) → B → E, and everything worked smoothly for five weeks. Then A) stopped reaching E, even though B still did. That’s strange... To figure this out, I tried installing TailScale on C) and D) to see if they could reach E). Both C and D appear connected in the admin panel, but B is fine from my end. E is reachable via HTTPS thanks to TailScale, and that’s been consistent for over a year.
I’m puzzled about why A) © or D) wouldn’t work the same way. My laptop at home connects easily to E, while I can’t get to E from outside. I’d really appreciate any guidance you can offer. Given my limitations, I might need to look up parts of your answers to understand what you mean. I’m not sure if switching to CLI tools or different operating systems would help, and I’m not very comfortable with Docker containers either.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Best, -a
I didn't carry out those actions in the "Enabling Synology outbound connections" section. It's unclear how it would function otherwise...