# Home server and NAS access

A NAS or home server sits behind your router, often behind carrier-grade
NAT, where forwarding a port is fragile or impossible. Airdress gives you a
permanent address that your home machines dial out to, so nothing at home
has to accept a connection from the internet.

## What you can do today

**Open a terminal on it, from anywhere.** Run `airdress shell host` on the
Linux machine, approve it once after comparing fingerprints, and open
sessions on it from your laptop or phone with `airdress shell`. The session
is end to end encrypted; your airdress only routes ciphertext. What may run
is a profile you write on the machine itself, never a command sent over the
network. [Shells](/shells/).

```sh
# on the home server
airdress shell host --operator https://<your airdress address> --name nas
airdress shell profile add --id admin --label "NAS shell" --program bash

# on your laptop
airdress shell admin --machine nas
```

**Link Home Assistant.** A Home Assistant enrolls with your airdress as a
machine and is linked as a `Home` when you approve it; your functions can
then operate it, read its state and notify you, with nothing dialling in.
[Homes](/cli/devices-and-machines/#homes).

**Run small services at your address.** A [function](/functions/) runs
behind your airdress and can bridge to something at home. A
[plugin](/cli/plugins/) adds a small app, such as a form or a map, on its
own subdomain; plugins work on an [operator you run
yourself](/reference/cli/) and are coming to an airdress we host.

**Note:** Serving a NAS's own web interface (DSM, TrueNAS, Nextcloud) at your
airdress address is not documented yet. Until it is, use a shell session to
administer the machine.

## Next steps

[Shells](/shells/)
  [Quickstart](/getting-started/quickstart/)