Sluggish/unreliable myqnapcloud connectivity

[Storyline]

I have had our TS453A NAS for several years now.

For the first few years it was connected to a couple of different ADSL routers that had DL/UL speeds of 12/2 Mbps with good latency and relatively low contention ie reliable ISP's. From memory it was connected to the routers using a dynamically assigned IP address. During this period I was able to log in to the NAS from various remote devices - pc's at work & mobile phones etc using the qnapcloud service. There were occasional connection issues but by and large I was able to log on quickly and the connection was robust and reasonably fast.
Then, a year ago we had a new FTTP connection installed. It was laid by the contracting arm of the company who -operates the national network and who laid the fibre down our road and back to the local exchange who are called BT Openreach here in the UK. The internet service itself is provided by a smallish telco with an excellent reputation and in the year we have been connected we have not had a single problem. The download speeds and of course much faster but the big difference is in the upload speed which is much, much faster and which is great for my wife who now works from home using some kind of VPN tunnel to connect to the server in her company's head office. This has been flawless and she says it feels the same as actually being in the office.

The one area where we seem to have gone backwards is in the ability to connect to the NAS remotely using the qnapcloud service and I wonder if this is an issue that others recognise. It occurred to me that maybe more and more people recognise how useful a NAS is and so a larger userbase is causing capacity issues at the QNAP end. I am completely non-technical but I would have thought that a direct fibre link into our house should result in a better remote connection to the NAS.

In addition to asking whether others have noticed a degraded service I would like to ask for advice whether a change in the way the NAS sits on the network might be causing a problem. When we had our low=tech adsl modem/router I had the NAS connected to one of its LAN ports and the router dynamically assigned an IP address to it. When we got our FTTP connection the fibre was connected to quite a high performance wireless router made by Huawei. I am aware of their black sheep reputation but from what I understand their hardware is well designed and built and in fact here in the UK they have supplied a lot of the upstream infrastructure particularly with mobile connections. The one change I have made with the NAS is to assign it a fixed IP on the router along with various other devices that are connected online. Accessing the NAS from a laptop/tablet or pc on the LAN is instantaneous and completely reliable. I can't see that this is the cause of the poor myqnapcloud service but maybe I am wrong.

Sorry to be so long winded but I wanted to explain the problem fully I would be very grateful if anyone would comment.

The TS453A is running the latest firmware - QTS 5.0.0.1932 build 20220129 and is populated by two raided disks. I realise that QTS 5 is a big change but I had these connection problems even before 5 arrived. The only other change I have made to the NAS apart from changing the way some security cameras are configured is to implement a local web server which required a completely new version of the Maria database service. Again though I am fairly sure I had the remote connection issues before this and although the web server project is currently stalled I seem to remember that I could access that on the www without problem which again points to something that is affecting myqnapcloud.

Many thanks to anyone who has got this far !!

Paul

[dolbyman]

If you are talking about cloudlnk (relay service without direct exposure) .. Yes it can be slow as QNAP states in the service agreement .. it's a free service with limitations

If you are talking about exposing your NAS directly to WAN via portforwards .. STOP that immediately !
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=164797

If you need to access your NAS directly from WAN, use a VPN server running on your router or dedicated appliance (e.g. raspi)

[Storyline]

Hi Dolbyman and thanks for your reply and I'm sorry for me delayed response. I've got into a really bad habit of not being on the ball when following up posts on various forums - I must do better !

I don't recognise the cloudlink name you mention unless it is a generic description for the Qnap branded MyQnapcloud product that my post refers to. This is a free service which allows you to connect via a qnap.com link thereby avoiding exposure. I do have a web server running but that is hopefully secure.

As regards myQnapcloud I have discovered an error report in QTS. I have never noticed before but I have two apps - one called MyQNAPcloud Link (2.2.25) & one called MyQNAPCloud(2.0.2) with a skull & crossbones and QPKG on the icon. This second one reports 'The app has incorrect information in its configuration file' when you mouse over it. AFAK I haven't entered any config stuff on QTS, any details have been entered on QNAP web space, Seeing this error though made me immediately think whether it had anything to do with my problems, Coincidences do happen though but it definitely warrants some investigation.

If I find anything out that is relevant I will update here in case someone else stumbles across this post in the future.

Paul

[dolbyman]

Skull and crossbones sounds bad and could already point to a compromised/hacked NAS (malware)

viewtopic.php?t=134950

[manny2003]

In addition to asking whether others have noticed a degraded service...

Hi, yes I am experiencing a degraded service when using cloudlink in the last few months. I am unable to use the Qmanager Android app via Cloudlink. It takes years to refresh.
It worked very well for years.

[Storyline]

Hi manny2003 & thanks for your comments (sorry it has taken me so long to respond !)

So I assume that it is not just me - I am intrigued why more people do not report the same issue so maybe there is something specific that only effects a small number of users - maybe m/c, geo-location or connection protocols. It would just be guesswork for me to speculate further. One thing that is a constant for me is that as I obviously don't use the service if I can get on the same network as my NAS, I only use qnapcloud when out & about using an LTE connection. Even this can come in various forms as sometimes I use a Qnap app on my phone with it's online data and other times I use my laptop with connectivity coming via a dedicated wireless mobile hotspot. There is also a variety of mobile service providers and 4G LTE and now 5G connections to throw into the mix.

In light of all the above variability it does point to it being caused by an issue with my specific machine and as it has persisted over the significant upgrade to QTS5 it also looks hardware related . As I said at the start through - I know next to nothing so can only hope it gets better over time !!

Actually, that might not strictly be true as I have made some changes to the software on the NAS that might conceivably impact on its online behaviour eg I seem to remember there was quite a bit of trial and error going on when trying to access the webserver I mentioned in my initial post and maybe I did something that was not a good idea. These sorts of things are ever present risks for someone like me who is living proof of the maxim that a bit of knowledge can be dangerous thing when out of your depth on a relatively complex device like a NAS (please do not all laugh at once - I can't believe I am the only one). There are two things I can say in my defence - firstly I do realise there is the potential of serious danger when connecting to the outside world and so I prioritise that danger above anything and am reasonably confident our home network is as secure as it can be. Of course I can't defend against something like a denial of service attack and probably a determined baddy who went all out to breach our defences might get through but the average probing automated opportunist who found my IP should be rebuffed (I sincerely hope this statement is not taken as a challenge by anybody !). I'd like to think I have the intellect that could enable me to be fully in control of my favourite bit of domestic tech but suffer from a lack of time to teach myself the required skills in a systematic manner coupled with age related declining memory performance.