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Forum Discussion
ReadyShare access from Chromebook
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.
3 Replies
Have you tried \\router-ip (using the local address of the router)?
Does the DLNA server work properly with the chromebook?
You might also want to try formatting the drive as NTFS
- https://kb.netgear.com/24059/What-are-the-USB-drive-requirements-for-ReadySHARE-on-my-NETGEAR-router
We don't use IP addresses on our networks. We use names. The Bonjour and LLMNR, et. al. are perfectly capable of name lookups. If they're not, that's a malfunction to be troubleshot.
We're unsure how to use DLNA to access anything from a Chromebook. The media apps are extremely limited. We may go look for documentation, but who knows. We don't really plan on using DLNA anyway: the intended use cases here are for documents and printables to be served/shared, not empee thr33 music, or empegg videos to stream.
Also we're completely baffled why NTFS would help??? We don't use NTFS features: we don't run Active Directory or whatever it was renamed to. The Netgear router is the only SMB server on the network entirely. Literally there are no "Windows users" or Administrators to have accounts or mandatory access control lists in the NTFS folders.
Why would NTFS work when VFAT isn't working? The link you linked indicates that there's at least 10 varieties of filesystem that are compatible. We use vFAT for maximum portability. NTFS wouldn't be very nice for a macOS system or a Linux system, you know. vFAT's readable basically by anything modern. We're definitely not going to format little tiny thumb drives as NTFS, not with no Domain Controller or PDC being administerd. Can't afford those licenses!
At any rate, we figured out the issues and worked out the kinks. The SMB file sharing seems to be working good enough to share among ChromeOS. Android 16 is another ball of wax. We're unwilling to use 3rd-party sus apps to handle SMB. Google Android seems to completely lack any drivers or support natively for that sort of access.
Thank you for the thoughts, Stephen. We appreciate ya!
We don't use IP addresses on our networks. We use names. The Bonjour and LLMNR, et. al. are perfectly capable of name lookups. If they're not, that's a malfunction to be troubleshot.
Well, there was a malfunction since the access wasn't working for you. So it was totally about troubleshooting/fault isolation.
I was proposing doing a test using the IP address. I was not proposing a solution. If that connected, then there would a problem with name resolution (which sometimes does fail).
FWIW, asking about DLNA was also a troubleshooting question. It's a different protocol connecting to a different server in the router. If that worked, it would point to a problem with SMB. If it failed, it would point to either problem with the storage itself or with the USB hardware in the router.
Also we're completely baffled why NTFS would help??? We don't use NTFS features: we don't run Active Directory or whatever it was renamed to.
You seem to be confusing disk formats with network protocols. Active Directory has nothing to do with NTFS. And you can certainly use NTFS w/o ACL.
I suggested NTFS because VFAT isn't on the list of supported formats. NTFS is, and is also fully supported on your Chromebook. There are no licenses required.
While NTFS is read-only on a Mac, you didn't say that you had a Mac. In any event, when you use SMB, the Mac can still write to the ReadyShare folder, since the SAMBA server in the router is doing the reads and writes to the storage.
It looks like VFAT works (despite being omitted from the list). FWIW, VFAT has a max file size of 4 GB - which could get in the way if you are decide later on to put large files on the drive.
FWIW, it'd be ideal if Netgear supported exFAT, which has become the default format for external storage. It's a nuisance to have to re-format a drive that has a perfectly good file system already on it that is supported by all operating systems.
Android 16 is another ball of wax
Although I currently am using an iPhone, I believe that the stock Files app on Pixel and Samsung phones (and probably some other phones) supports SMB.
You can also just use the web interface in Chrome.
