Synology NAS Says ‘This Site Can’t Be Reached’: How To Fix This

Synology’s NASes are usually fairly reliable. You plug them into your home network, and then you can easily access them via file explorer or a web browser. However, sometimes things… go awry.

When you try to access your NAS over a web browser (either to transfer files, or simply to manage it via the DSM admin panel), you get an annoying “This Site Can’t Be Reached” error. Unfortunately there can be quite a few reasons why you see this error, so let’s drill into why this error might appear – starting with a brief recap of how a NAS connects.

Overview: How Synology Connects

A Synology NAS is usually connected to your home network via an ethernet cable: by plugging one end of the cable into your NAS, and the other into your router (or a network switch). This then allows your NAS to be accessed anywhere in your home, hopefully allowing super-fast file transfers.

You can also access your files (and the admin panel) through your web browser by navigating to http://synologynas:5000 – or if you know your NAS’ IP address, by going to http://ipaddress:5000. This is known as local LAN access, and it usually starts with “192”.

If you are away from your home, you can access your NAS by launching your web browser and going to http://quickconnect.to/username (assuming you have enabled QuickConnect, of course). This is known as external/internet access.

Key Point: It is important to know whether the URL you are using is a local or external address, because no-one will be able to use a local address (starting with http://synologynas... or http://192...) outside of your own home network. I will discuss this point in more detail later.

However whether you connect locally or externally, you might sometimes get an error in your browser like “This site can’t be reached: (site) took too long to respond” or “This site can’t be reached. The connection was reset”. While this is a frustrating error, there are often some simple fixes for it.

Fixing The “This Site Can’t Be Reached” Error

This error is particularly annoying because it’s just so vague! It would be better if it said “Your Synology NAS has a port forwarding issue” or “You are trying to access your NAS using the wrong URL”! However your web browser simply doesn’t know exactly why your Synology NAS is acting up (or that you are trying to access a Synology device), so it is forced to give the vague error instead.

Let’s dive into why you might get this error, and how you can resolve it. There are a range of possible causes, but I will start with the most likely ones.

Double Check That Your NAS Is Actually On!

This might seem obvious, but it’s worth double checking. If your NAS is off, you can’t access it. Who knew? But (half) joking aside, if you can’t directly see your NAS, you might assume that it is working fine – when it is actually having issues (or turned off).

This will naturally lead to you getting the “This site can’t be reached” error because the web browser quite literally can’t access your Synology NAS.

You should double check your NAS, ensuring that it is turned ON (shown by a blue light around the power switch) and the disk and LAN lights are flashing green (showing they are working well):

Pay particular attention to the ‘status’ or ‘alert’ LED, too, because an orange LED could be a sign of an internal issue with your NAS. If you do see an orange LED, check out Synology’s specific help page for orange LEDs.

At Home? Confirm You Have The Right URL

It’s really useful that you can go to “http://synologynas:5000” and your NAS admin panel loads up, but this shortcut URL doesn’t always work reliably. The “synologynas” hostname works well for me on a Windows computer, but it never works when I’m on my Chromebook.

So if you are at home and trying to connect locally to your NAS, you might want to try connecting to the IP address instead. To do this, launch http://find.synology.com/ and it will scan for your Synology NAS on your home network. If it finds it, it will give you the IP address (192.168.4.240 in my case):

You can then go to “http://192.168.4.240:5000” in your browser (changing the IP address as appropriate), and this should hopefully load. It will definitely be more reliable than relying on the “synologynas” shortcut, if you use non-Windows operating systems.

Away From Home (Or Sharing Photos)? Use The External Address

If you are out of your home, or you are trying to share NAS access (or Synology Photos) with friends, you will need to ensure that you use the external address to connect to it. After all, a URL like http://192.168.4.240:5000 (or http://synologynas:5000) will not work outside of your home network.

This is because a local URL can only ever resolve to your NAS from within your home network. The moment your device connects to another Wi-Fi network (or LTE network, if you’re on a phone), you will not be able to connect to your Synology NAS using local access.

You will instead need to use external access, i.e. by enabling QuickConnect and then navigating to http://QuickConnect.to/username in your web browser. This is also the URL that you would need to share with friends or colleagues, whether you’re trying to show them photos from Synology Photo Station or you want to grant them access to your NAS’s files.

Check That QuickConnect Is Enabled

Naturally though, the QuickConnect.to service will only work if you have enabled QuickConnect within your NAS. It might also be possible that it was enabled in the past, but you briefly disabled it ‘as a test’ – then forgot this. Either way, you will need to enable it again for proper external access.

You will need to be at home to enable QuickConnect, because you will firstly need to go into the DSM admin panel, and then go to Control Panel and “Quick Connect”. From here, tick the “Enable QuickConnect” option:

If you don’t currently have a Synology account, you will need to register one because QuickConnect requires this. One you are signed up (or logged in) to Synology, you will see a QuickConnect URL that starts with “http://QuickConnect.to/“. It is this URL that you will need to use (or give to friends) whenever you’re away from your home network.

Are Your Port Forwarding Rules Set-up In Your Router?

While QuickConnect can sometimes work ‘out of the box’, you might also need to set up port forwarding rules to improve external access speeds and reliability. Port forwarding is a way of telling your internet router that “all traffic to the following ‘point’ should be routed straight to my Synology NAS box”.

While Synology can sometimes create these port forwarding rules automatically (within your router), you might also need to manually create them. The first step though is to go to the Synology admin panel, click “External Access” then “Router Configuration”:

Assuming you don’t have anything set up here already, click on Create and following the steps shown in the wizard. Hopefully Synology will be able to automatically configure things at your router. But if it can’t, it will tell you what port forwarding rules to create.

You will then need to load up your router’s admin console or app, and find the port forwarding page. Then input the relevant details. While this might seem confusing and overly technical, you are essentially saying that “traffic to the following ports should go straight to my NAS”.

In the case below, I have created a rule that ‘reserves’ an IP address (and port forwarding point) for my Synology NAS with local IP 192.168.4.240:

I then specify exactly what external traffic should be automatically routed (port forwarded) to my local Synology NAS:

Rule Out IP Address Conflicts

If you have used Windows for many years, you may have randomly seen an error appear that says: “Windows has detected an IP address conflict”. This weird-sounding error means that more than once device in your home has tried to ‘reserve’ the same IP address within your router.

However IP addresses should be like house addresses: there should only be one per device (or per house). So if more than one device is trying to reserve the same IP address, it will be impossible to access one or both of those devices (from other devices in the network).

The same is true for your NAS: if your Synology device is trying to reserve the same IP address as another device on your network, you probably won’t be able to access your NAS.

Unfortunately fixing this specific issue can be difficult, and even Synology’s help guide for an IP address clash is quite vague. I personally just restart every relevant device, and this fixes the problem 90% of the time. So if your NAS is plugged into a network switch, and this network switch connects to your router, reset all these devices:

• Reset your Synology NAS.
• Restart your network switch.
• Restart the router too.
• Also restart any device that you suspect might be having the IP address conflict (such as a Windows PC that complains about “IP address conflict” detected.

Tip: You might also want to reserve your NAS’ IP address within your router’s admin panel (or smartphone app), as I shown in the port forwarding section above. This will help to ensure that other devices can’t accidentally ‘steal’ your NAS’ IP address in the future.

The following YouTube video explores the reasons for this issue (and how to fix it) in a bit more detail – and while it is Windows-centric, the same concepts apply for investigating this issue with your NAS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4YV-xjKvwE&ab_channel=MDTechVideos

Try An Alternate Browser (Or Computer)

While the cause of the “This site can’t be reached” error is usually due to an issue with your NAS, it might also be a legitimate issue with your web browser or computer. There can be a wide range of possible issues here:

• Your web browser is very out of date.
• You have some broken or corrupted plugin installed in your browser.
• You have a VPN set-up in your browser (or on your computer), which is misconfigured or temporarily down.
• Your computer’s date/time is wrong (this can cause issues with SSL certificates, which are used with external access).
• Your computer has an internet issue (such as a weak Wi-Fi signal).

In this case, it is always worth trying to use a different browser – or computer. This will at least rule out whether the cause is local to your browser/computer or not.

Reset Your Synology NAS

If all else fails, you should consider resetting your Synology NAS. This can often flush out any temporary glitches that are causing it to not be accessible. There are three ‘levels’ of reset open to you:

1. A manual shutdown of your NAS, and starting it back up again.
2. Putting a pin into the RESET port, or holding the RESET button down. This is known as a soft reset.
3. Doing a full factory reset and re-install. This is known as a hard reset.

We would not recommend going for option (3) unless you really need to, but it could be worth trying option (2) if a simple restart doesn’t work.

A soft reset (option 2) of your NAS will not delete any data, but it will reset your admin password and also clear the network settings. This can therefore be a great option for resolving “this site can’t be reached” errors.

To do this, find the RESET button (or where you need to insert a pin) and hold it down for about 4 seconds. When you hear a beep, release the button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxcJZqfrAvU&ab_channel=DigitalAlohaTechTips

Open up Web Assistant by going to http://find.synology.com/, and following the steps in your web browser. You can then choose new admin credentials, and try accessing your NAS again – now that your network settings have been reset.

If that still doesn’t work, you might need to do a full system reset (option 3) which will remove all your Synology settings, require a full DSM re-install – but still keep your actual files. Look at “Mode 2” in Synology’s help page for full details of this time-intensive process.

Tip: To be honest, if the “this site can’t be reached error” is being caused by a config issue, option 2 (a soft reset) will fix things in 99% of cases. I wouldn’t try out option 3 unless nothing else seems to be fixing the problem.