Picture the moment: you type NAS or diskstation.local into your file explorer and nothing happens. Then, half out of frustration, you type the raw IP address like 192.168.1.50 and every shared folder pops up instantly.
That single fact tells you almost everything. The NAS is alive, the network cable is fine, the shares are working. Something is only broken in the step that turns a name into a number.
That step is name resolution, and on a home network it is a lot messier than most people expect. Let me walk you through what is actually happening under the hood, in words that do not assume you run a data center for a living.
What DNS actually does on a home network
Every device on your network is reachable by a number, its IP address, something like 192.168.1.50. Computers love numbers. People do not, which is why we invented names.
DNS, the Domain Name System, is the phone book that maps a friendly name to that number. When you ask for a website, your computer quietly asks a DNS server "what is the address for this name" and gets a number back before it connects.
Here is the catch that trips up so many home users. The big public DNS servers run by your provider or by Cloudflare and others know about public websites. They have never heard of your Synology sitting in the spare room.
So when you type your NAS name, that request either goes nowhere useful or gets answered by a completely different, more local mechanism. Understanding which mechanism is supposed to answer is the whole game.
Local names use a different plumbing entirely
Names that live only inside your house get resolved by one of several small, local systems, and the one your device picks depends on the operating system and the exact name you typed.
- mDNS (Bonjour) handles names ending in .local, like diskstation.local. Apple devices and most modern Linux boxes speak this natively. Windows only learned it well in recent years.
- NetBIOS and WINS is the old Windows way of finding a plain short name like NAS. It is chatty, old, and increasingly switched off by default.
- Your router acting as a DNS server can hand out names for devices it has handed IP addresses to over DHCP. Some routers do this well. Many do it badly or not at all.
The first time I hit this, I assumed there was one system responsible for names. There are three or four, they overlap, and any one of them can quietly fail while the others limp along.
Why the IP works but the name fails
When the IP works and the name does not, the packets are flowing fine. Your NAS receives traffic, replies, and serves files. The failure sits entirely in the lookup that happens a fraction of a second before that connection.
A mistake I see constantly is people rebooting the NAS over and over. The NAS is almost never the problem here. The thing that failed to answer the name question is usually your router or your PC.
Think of it like knowing a friend's exact street address but their name being missing from your contacts. You can still drive there. Your phone just cannot look them up by name.
The three usual culprits
In practice, a home NAS name failure almost always comes down to one of these:
- Your router does not register DHCP client names into its own DNS, so the router has no idea what "NAS" means.
- The NAS has a static IP set manually, which means it never told the router a name at all.
- Windows has NetBIOS and mDNS in a half-working state, so short names and .local names both misfire.
Notice a pattern. Two of the three are about the NAS never announcing its name in a way the rest of the network can hear.
A concrete example from a real setup
A friend of mine ran a Synology DS220+ with a static IP of 192.168.1.50 set directly on the NAS. Files worked perfectly by IP. The name DS220 failed on every Windows laptop in the house.
The reason was simple once we looked. Because the IP was static and set on the NAS, the NAS never went through the router's DHCP process, so the router's built-in DNS had zero record of the name DS220. The router could not answer a question it had never been told the answer to.
We fixed it two ways, and both worked. First, we added a manual DNS entry on the router pairing DS220 to 192.168.1.50. Second, on the Synology we confirmed Bonjour service was on, which made DS220.local resolve instantly on the Mac in the house.
How the resolution methods compare
Different methods suit different homes. Here is a rough guide to which does what, so you can pick where to spend your effort.
| Method | Name style | Works best on | Reliability at home |
|---|---|---|---|
| Router DNS + DHCP | NAS or nas.home | All devices | Good, if the router supports it |
| mDNS / Bonjour | nas.local | Mac, Linux, newer Windows | Very good on Apple gear |
| NetBIOS / WINS | NAS | Older Windows | Fading, often off by default |
| Hosts file | Any name you choose | One specific device | Rock solid, but manual |
The hosts file deserves a mention because it is the one method nobody can break remotely. You hard code the name to the IP on a single machine, and that machine will always find the NAS.
The reliable long-term fix
If you want the name to just work everywhere, the cleanest approach is a DHCP reservation on your router. You tell the router "this NAS always gets 192.168.1.50" and, on most routers, that also registers the name into local DNS automatically.
Set the NAS back to DHCP, not static, and let the router pin the address. This gives you a stable IP and a working name from one setting, instead of fighting two systems that disagree.
For the stubborn cases, especially mixed Windows and Mac houses, running a tiny local DNS resolver like Pi-hole or the DNS built into many routers can act as the single phone book everything trusts. That is a bigger project, but it ends the guessing.
Vendor documentation is genuinely helpful here too. Synology's own guide to local network access walks through the name and IP methods clearly.
Getting your bearings from here
The mental shift that fixes this for good is small. A name and an IP are two separate things, and a broken name never means a broken NAS.
Next time NAS fails, try the raw IP first. If files appear, you have narrowed the whole problem to name resolution, and you now know exactly which three systems to check and in what order.
Do that once, wire up a DHCP reservation, and the spare-room box stops being a mystery and goes back to being just another folder you double click without thinking.
Frequently asked questions
Why can I reach my NAS by IP address but not by its name?
Because reaching it by IP skips name resolution entirely, while reaching it by name requires a system to translate that name into the IP. The NAS itself is working fine. Something in your router's DNS, mDNS, or NetBIOS setup failed to answer the name question.
Should I use nas.local or just NAS to connect?
It depends on your devices. Names ending in .local use mDNS and work great on Mac, Linux, and newer Windows. A plain short name like NAS relies on older NetBIOS or your router's DNS, which is less reliable. Try both and use whichever resolves on your machines.
Does giving my NAS a static IP cause DNS problems?
It often does on home networks. When you set a static IP directly on the NAS, it may never register its name with the router, so the router's DNS has no record to hand out. A DHCP reservation gives you a fixed IP while still letting the router learn the name.
Will restarting my NAS fix a name resolution problem?
Almost never, because the NAS is rarely the cause. The failure lives in your router or client PC's lookup process, not the NAS. Restarting the router or renewing your PC's network connection is more likely to help than rebooting the NAS.
What is the most reliable way to make the NAS name always work?
A DHCP reservation on your router is the cleanest fix, since it pins the IP and usually registers the name in local DNS at the same time. For a single stubborn computer, adding a hosts file entry mapping the name to the IP will always work.
