Using an iPad with a Synology NAS | Use a-Shell to find a website’s IP address


In this video we demonstrate how from an iPad you can find the IP address of a website or Synology NAS. However in order to make this process consistent with users of macOS. We will be using a terminal command. This terminal command was very useful when configuring DNS server on our NAS.

Note: As iPadOS does not have a terminal, we need to use a terminal emulator to run the command. In this video we used a free terminal emulator called a-Shell. The reason we like using a terminal emulator, is so we can use the same macOS terminal command on our iPad.

Quick reference notes:

  • Download and open the a-Shell app
  • To find the local IP address of our NAS, or the IP address being used by a website. At the command prompt type.
host [domain name of NAS or webserver]
  • Pressing Enter on the keyboard to display the IP address of a NAS or web server.

Note: If you try and access a website using its IP address, and the site fails to load. This basically indication that a website is being hosted on a shared server. This is becuase in an instance were a server is hosting multiple websites. There is no way for the iPad to resolve which website is using the single IP address that server has.

  • To gracefully close your current Terminal session type:
exit
  • When you press Enter on your keyboard, the Terminal session will end. This in turn will close the Terminal application.

Reference materials:

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