Brand New M1 MacBook Pro does not see any other Macs or Network Drives— Can anyone assist?

Hey Folks,

My job recently saddled me with a new 16" MacBook Pro M1 (Apple M1 Pro Chip/16GB RAM/500GB SSD) that came stock with MacOS Monterrey (MacOS 12). The main issue is whenever I attempt to look up a local mac on my home network by its name (e.g. MacMini.local), or look for a local computer/network device in the Network section of the Finder Sidebar, nothing appears for selection and it will not connect via Finder's "connect to server" unless I manually type in the IP Address to connect.

I also have a Synology on my network that is not appearing either, even though it is set to be visible and remotely mount on any machine on my network (and does appear on other Macs I have in my household, not running Monterrey).

The other mac on the network is running Big Sur (latest update, 11.6.3) and is broadcasting for file sharing as well (and also appears on any Mac NOT running Monterrey). It is an Intel MacMini 2018. It cannot be connected to by its ".local" name via SMB nor AFP.

I have all of the sidebar items checkmarked and activated in Finder preferences, including Bonjour devices and the Network sidebar selection, and nothing I seem to do will fix this problem that ONLY Monterrey machines seem to be having.

I have already tried the following, with no positive result:

• First, I tried to reset file sharing on all the machines to make sure that they are properly broadcasting their availability. No change.
• Second, I tried rebooting the machine to see if it was just not appearing in the Network sidebar. No result. Rebooted at least 5 times to see if it would pick up the devices: no change.
• Third, I tried to do a full reinstall of Monterrey from the Recovery Console, as possibly something was corrupted in system settings either from factory, or from an update that was run to get Monterrey current on the machine before use. Still no change, and cannot see the devices on the network.
• Fourth, I tried creating a brand new user to see if it was a corrupted user profile, and still, No change: no devices can be seen on brand new accounts either.

So at this point I am at an impasse: It looks like file sharing and network discovery for other Macs and Network devices on Monterrey is horrendously terribly broken, as nothing that is standard as a fix seems to remedy the situation. I've done absolutely EVERYTHING except completely wipe the machine and install a completely fresh and new clean copy of Monterrey. However, I don't think that would end up being a fix either, as one of the previous steps should have alleviated this issue if it was a simple issue of a corrupted OS or Profile.

I don't understand how they could have possibly made things even worse with Monterrey, but if anything, Apple is more than capable and they seem to have done it here.

Is anyone else having this issue on an M1 running the latest OS? Anyone have a fix that they may have discovered? I've searched around, and there seems to be ONE post about this from back when the M1's first came out and how Big Sur was having this issue, but that thread ended last April without a solid fix— and it technically no longer applies because we're on a different OS— and if this was a general issue I'd have thought it'd be resolved in a prior update.

This is no end of frustrating, and as someone who has worked on Macs in a technical capacity for over a decade and a half, I can only surmise that this network discovery function of MacOS Monterrey 12.2 is completely broken.

Any suggestions or advice on how to fix (and please do make sure and read the whole post so you don't suggest something already tried)?

Thanks in advance.