I have a Windows 10 machine where I've installed VPN client. It is HMA fully automatic client so not much I could do wrong.
When VPN is connected - I can't access my NAS device using it's network name MYNAS. At the same time I can access it by IP address - it works fine, transfer speed is high.
Once I disconnect from the VPN - the NAS is available by name immidiatelly.
So my question is - how can I fix or at least debug it?
Thanks!
A workaround would be to edit your local hosts file to hard code the hostname mynas to be associated with it's ip address.
Copy the file hosts from C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ to your desktop.
Open the file from your desktop with Notepad.
On a new line after/below everything that is already in there type...
192.168.1.100 mynas
Where mynas is the hostname you currently use to access the NAS, and 192.168.1.100 is the current local IP address of your NAS.
Save and close the hosts file.
Right-Click the edited hosts file on your desktop and select Copy.
In file manager navigate to the directory C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\
Paste the edited hosts file here and say yes to overwrite the existing file.
Restart the computer then test.
When you try to reach a hostname, the computer will first check this file, then if it does not find a matching entry it will proceed on to check with your DNS instead, so by editing this file we in a sense create a hardcoded local DNS entry.
Keep in mind that you must update the hosts file again manually each time the NAS device IP or name changes.
This will also only affect the local computer, you must repeat the steps on any other local computer you want to also have the same hostname/ip association setup on.
First of all, I'd like to draw more attention to what a VPN really is. I am assuming that, by VPN, you mean something like this: OVPN - Free VPN Provider.
If this is not the case, please ignore everything I say.
First of all, how a VPN works is. VPNs are basically encrypted proxy servers.
A VPN client (after encrypting them, of course) forwards all of your data to the VPN server, where it is decrypted and the server executes the request. This request returns content, and that content is forwarded (after being encrypted) back to the VPN client, where you decrypt the return content and read it.
The problem I think I see is that your NAS device is on your Local Area Network (LAN). This means that the hostname (mynas) is on your router's DNS.
This means that you can access the device by this hostname (mynas), as long as you are asking the router for the IP of the NAS (all hostnames need to be converted into an IP address with a DNS in order for requests to happen).
Only the router knows where on Earth (or in this case the internet) mynas is.
Your VPN server doesn't ask your router for DNS (that's normal).
Instead, it asks something like Google's DNS (8.8.8.8).
This means that it won't ask your router to access its DNS database.
The router is the only person (DNS) who knows where your NAS is locally. Google's DNS (that I've assumed your VPN server is using to fetch IPs) throws back an error at your VPN server, saying that it can't find mynas.
If you want to access your NAS by typing into your browser http://mynas/ or ftp://mynas, you need to register the domain mynas. I hate to break it to you, but that's not possible. There needs to be a suffix like .com.
However, what you can do is you can register a public (instead of local) domain name (eg. mynas.com) so that any DNS (including Google's) will know where to find the NAS.
Yay! Everyone can find the IP of the NAS from anywhere (including the VPN server)!
You probably don't want to get a domain name just for your NAS (do you?), making that option invalid (but you could get one for free from Freenom)
FINAL ANSWER: You shouldn't use a VPN to access something on your local area network. There is no point in doing such a thing. The only reason to use a VPN while accessing your NAS on your own network is if: * You want to hide your IP address from your own devices (are you logging yourself? Do you not trust yourself with your own privacy?) OR * You want to demonstrate your trust to your VPN service provider * You want more traffic to happen through the internet
As you can see, both these excuses are pretty lame :D. (What I am trying to say is don't use a VPN to access some device on your local network)
home.local versus when connected to the VPN perhaps it configuring a VPN/company DNS suffix such as company.org on the network adapters. But if you had an internal DNS server setup that resolved the home.local hosts if NAS.home.local would always be resolvable regardless of being connected to the VPN as long as you use the fully qualified domain name like that. I can't test this to confirm but a thought how it may be possible internally.
Mar 27, 2020 at 6:09
home.local DNS suffix defined on the adapter and then when it is connected if that'd make any difference. I also wasn't sure if you could adjust the VPN adapter DNS settings once connected and see if changing the primary or maybe add your internal as a secondary or even third DNS server helped without any suffixes. I assume you can ping the home DNS server IP addresses when connected to the VPN. I know I've worked around this sort of issue before but not sure if it was a site VPN long ago rather than a client connection.
Mar 27, 2020 at 6:15
My last version of this was not very helpful. How to debug name resolution on the LAN when VPN is active on Windows:
Without setting static IP address for the nas and a HOSTS file on the PC, then name-based local networking is only possible with a DNS server. Maybe a different topic to set that up.
