Hello.
I want to share my recent experience installing Tailscale to connect to my home NAS remotely. I used OpenVPN for a couple of years to avoid using QNAP MyCloud Link. The OpenVPN server was my QNAP NAS, and I configured Qfirewall to accept the connection. I set up port forwarding on my home router/modem. I recently lost my router configuration and had to set up port forwarding again. Then I noticed that the router was giving a lot of warnings as soon as I activated it. I had seen those warnings before, but I didn’t know that they were caused by port forwarding.
I did some research and realized that port forwarding wasn’t a good idea from the beginning. Then I found Tailscale, which promised super easy and secure connections. If you go to the website, you’ll see this explanation: “A Zero Trust identity-based connectivity platform that replaces your old VPN, SASE, and PAM and connects remote teams, multi-cloud environments, CI/CD pipelines, Edge & IoT devices, and AI workloads.” 
I just have a NAS to store my photos, I don’t understand any of this.
This tool can do many things, but its main function is to create a secure network connection with multiple devices. This allows you to do a lot of things with those devices. There are no servers or clients; there are only peers. You can start using it with one device. It requires authentication, and they decided to use external authentication, so you have to log in with an external account (Google, GitHub, Microsoft, Apple).
This page Access QNAP NAS from anywhere · Tailscale Docs says that it works with ARM 64 processors, and my QNAP TS-216G has an ARM processor. If you can’t fin the app in the app center (like me) it can be downloaded at this link: https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/#qpkgs. There are several versions: arm-x19, arm-x31, arm-x41, arm-64, x86, x86_64, and x86_ce53xx. I’m not sure what the difference is. I just know my NAS has an ARM processor. I did a lot of research, but I couldn’t find any information about which one to use. I installed the arm_64 file manually on my NAS, and it worked.
When you open the app you’ll find a big button that opens the tailscale sign-up page on the internet. You’ll need to authenticate with one of the providers there. The email address you choose in this moment will be somehow the name of the network and the user who owns it. After this step, the qnap is connected to the network and has a particular ip address that starts with 100. You can add more devices to the network using the same email address (user). Each device will have its own ip address. I think that eventually you can add more users (email addresses) to the network that can add more devices.
I installed tailscale in my android phone and used the same email address to sign in. Now both devices are connected in their own shared tailscale network. This allows them to reach each other using their respective tailscale ip addresses, even if they are on different networks. Each device now has two ip addresses, the ip address of their conventional network and one tailscale ip address. I didn’t change any settings on the router, but now the NAS is accessible from an Android phone outside the local network.
It’s easy to set up any tailscale device to open a route to other IP addresses in their conventional network. For example, the NAS (which is connected with tailscale) can open a route to the printer in the home network. So now my android phone in a hotel can reach the printer at home using its home ip address. I wouldn’t need the NAS to open a route if I could install Tailscale in the printer. This is useful for devices that can’t run Tailscale.
On qfile in my phone I’ve set up the local ip address of the nas, so at home it connects directly to the nas. When I used openvpn, I started the VPN which let me connect to the nas because I was virtually on the local network. But when I connect with tailscale, my phone at the hotel sees the tailscale ip address of my nas, not the local ip address. One option to reach the nas with qfile is to change the ip address in the qfile app to the tailscale ip address. But when I get home I need to change it back to the local address. Not ideal, because qfile is meant to write the ip address one time and forget about it.
Another solution I’m testing involves opening a route to the nas itself. This way qfile can reach the nas again using the usual local ip address. I don’t think this makes much sense but it works. Another option is to use a local hostname instead of an ip address. This method works locally but my home network has a subnet that doesn’t play well with hostnames. So I haven’t investigated further.
So far, I can confirm that tailscale works to establish a remote connection with my NAS. However, I dont’s know how fast or reliable it is during long sessions. And now that I know more about it, I would say it is easy to set up. I think this is a very good alternative to the VPNs.
