Greetings!

We're excited to finally own a Netgear router again! Our WiFi was "flaky" for at least 13 months until we wised up to the real solution: a brand-new WiFi 7 RS300.

Now we're extremely happy with all the features in here, and the Windows-friendly nature of the product. So, the question this week is whether the ReadyShare features and server(s) can be accessed from a standard Chromebook on the Stable Channel.

Google ChromeOS Version 142.0.7444.181 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Acer 516GE, 8GB RAM; 128GB storage; Intel CORE i5; iRISXe GPU.

The Chromebook is currently plugged directly into the router via 2.5Gb Ethernet cable. The network connection is reliable and stable. We've also verified the same for all WiFi bands available. Layer 3-6 connectivity is not the issue.

We've tried assorted USB 3.x thumb drives, including the current SanDisk 64GB. They were reformatted according to vFAT, in order to be compatible and recognized by the Netgear Nighthawk's ReadyShare system.

ReadyShare (SMB server) can be accessed through the Google ChromeOS native Files app. It features integrations with Google Drive, MS OneDrive, and a rudimentary feature for connecting to Windows shares by name. It is unclear if browsing the network is supported.

It seems that ReadyShare was working a few days ago, but I'm unsure.

Now the Nighthawk itself is named "Babylon4", and its SSIDs uniformly named "Babylon4_nomap". However, the ReadyShare configuration insists on the default name, and behaves strangely when we try to change it. That's fine. We'll test with whatever name is given.

ChromeOS definitely supports SMB 3.0+ and should never be attempting a 2.0 negotation. Disabled for security reasons. The "Network Neighborhood" service is enabled on \\readyshare link. Password protected.

The share is enabled, and DLNA Media Server is enabled.

But the widget in Files just isn't seeing any network shares; a dropdown list of none; typing in manually yields no joy.

There is not currently an actual Windows system here to be used for checking on this. There's KATRINA, the Android 16 smartphone, but we're leery of 3rd-party SMB clients.

Forum Discussion

ReadyShare access from Chromebook