Network Relay

Your other iPhone, iPad or Mac can reach your home network through the NAS Reborn device there. Away from home, it opens the router's settings page, prints to the printer or connects to a computer over SSH as if it were on your Wi-Fi.

What it needs

• NAS Reborn Pro on the device at home, with its hostname from the Serve tab and web serving on there, since the relay arrives the same way as web pages.
• NAS Reborn on the device that connects.

How it connects

The device that connects tries two ways and uses the first that works:

1. Directly, at the home device's nas2.dk address, when that device is reachable from the internet, over IPv6 or through a forwarded port.
2. Through both routers, with UDP hole punching. Both devices learn from the NAS Reborn server's STUN service which outside address their NAT router gives them, the server passes the request on, and both send to each other at the same moment, so each router takes the other's packets for answers to its own.

Hole punching does not always work. A router that picks a new outside port for every destination, as some mobile networks do for IPv4 under carrier-grade NAT, gives the other device an address that leads nowhere, and some firewalls drop the packets whatever the order. Over IPv6 only the routers' firewalls stand in the way, so it has the best chance there. When neither way works, the relay cannot connect and the app that tried sees an ordinary connection failure.

Switching it on

On the NAS Reborn device at home, open Settings > Network Relay and switch Relay this device's network on.

Your own devices

Your iPhone, iPad and Mac signed in to the same Apple Account get the device through iCloud Keychain within seconds. On each of them, open Settings > Network Relay in NAS Reborn and tap the device under Relays used from here. The first time, iOS asks to add a VPN configuration.

Someone else's device

1. On the device at home, tap Add device…, give it a name such as "Anna's iPhone" and confirm with Face ID, Touch ID or the passcode.
2. The screen shows a code and an address. Scan the code with the other device's camera, or send it the address. The link works once and for ten minutes, and New link makes another.
3. The link opens a page with Open in NAS Reborn. NAS Reborn asks to relay through the device, and the first time iOS asks to add a VPN configuration.

Every device gets a credential of its own, listed with when it was last used and by which device, as that device names itself in NAS Reborn. Your own devices share one entry, Your devices (iCloud), which lists each of them once two or more have used it. Showing a device's code again asks for Face ID, Touch ID or the passcode, because anyone holding the link can reach your network.

Names at home

The relay starts by itself when an app connects to a name at home, and only those connections go through it. Web pages, app updates and iCloud keep using the network the device is on.

Away from home, printer.local reaches the printer at home as it does on your Wi-Fi, unless a device on the network you are on answers to the same name, in which case that one is used. With several homes, a .local name goes to the first. Addresses your router hands out, such as 192.168.1.20, work while the relay is connected, also on a network that uses the same addresses, unless a device on that network answers at the same address, in which case that one is used.

The relay takes the device's VPN setting, where it shows as NAS Reborn Relay, so another VPN app turns it off while that one is on. If you switch it off under Settings > VPN, tap the device under Relays used from here to turn it back on.

Removing a device

On the device at home, swipe the device away under Devices using this relay, or open it and tap Revoke access…. From then on it cannot open new connections to your network, and those it already has open run until they close. On a device that uses other relays, swipe the device away under Relays used from here.