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I do some support work for a guy with some learning difficulties/communication issues - he's reasonably tech savvy and has bought a NAS drive to store all his music and films etc. He can access them on his home wifi but wants to be able to get them over 3G or wifi hotspots when he's out and about.
I'm not great with networking etc but AFAICS we need to set up a static IP address, and open the ports on the router which the NAS drive will use. Having a bit of trouble doing this though - how do I know which ports the NAS drive will use? I think we've managed to set up the static IP address. It's this NAS:
http://www.zyxel.com/uk/en/products_services/nsa320.shtml?t=p
Another complicating factor is he seems to have two routers - one for the BT infinity and a standard one. As you can tell I don't really know much about this stuff but I've been trying to read up/work it out.
There are also 'apps' that run on the NAS - he has a basic website already and he seems to want to run a Wordpress app on the NAS. I'm trying to help with this but I'm not sure what the point of doing it this way rather than just setting up Wordpress on a computer. He hasn't successfully managed to explain it to me but he seems quite set on it. Anyone know anything about this?
Any advice/help would be much appreciated. Or if anyone's got any links to good guides/explanations for numpties that would be great. I have tried to RTFM but can't seem to find the info I need. Cheers!
He's prbably only got one router and a fibre modem I imagine. Static IP - you can (and should) give the NAS a static internal IP, but unless his broadband package has a static public IP address with it, you can't set that up as such. You can however use something like DynDns to keep track of the routers dynamic public IP, and use a hostname to connect to it rather than an IP.
How does he want to access his files?
Ok thanks. Doubt his broadband package has a static IP - I'll look into DynDns.
He has a Zyxel iPad app that seems to work ok for accessing files off the NAS on the home network.
Something called Polkast sounds like it might be useful grum. Looks like you install a server package on the NAS, register it somewhere then you can access from a tablet, ipad, phone etc. Probably needs no port forwarding etc
[url= http://support.polkast.com/entries/21150638-How-do-I-install-update-Polkast-application-on-the-ZyXEL-NSA-300-series- ]Linky[/url]
The problem with just leaving a port open and forwarding traffic to the NAS is that you're leaving a door open into your network which isn't really the best thing to do.
He would be better off creating a VPN that would give secure access to his home network. But this is really depends on the router he's using.
What exactly does he want to do with the remotely accessed files? if he wants to play films and music via 3g or public wifi I suspect he's going to be pretty disappointed because the performance will suck.
If it's access to 'normal' files he'd be much better off with cloud storage such as Dropbox.
I don't envy his 3G data charges if he's going to be streaming movies over it, either.
Thanks again folks. I did look at Polkast but had dismissed it for some reason. Will have another look.
Streaming films and music yup - he has The One plan with Three which I think allows unlimited data including tethering (I'm sure there will be a fair use policy though). Speeds seem reasonably good on 3G most of the time - I guess tethering to an iPad (mini) will use more data though.
He gets use of BT Openzone hotspots too - dunno how good they are.
Looked at the manual for the NAS and section 11.6 takes you through configuring the dynamic dns capabilities of the NAS such that the NAS ip address is associated with a fixed domain name provided by a DDNS provider e.g. myNAS.dyndns.com (other providers are available)
Found on "Network->DyDNS" in the NAS config menu.
Cheers will give that a pop.
Polkast worked a treat. Thanks all. He's very chuffed.
He would like to be able to get at the music from the NAS on his MacBook when out and about too - strangely the Polkast Mac app only seems to allow for sharing content from the Mac rather than accessing files. Will keep digging.