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Forum Discussion
Reach NAS Outside Network
Hi everyone! I'm going to move with my girlfriend next week to a own appartment, but i'm going to be nice to my parrents and leave my NAS with them. (they using boxee to watch movies from nas) And...
You router has two set of IP adresses (it can have more on complex networks). One is called public IP address and the other private IP address (you seem to already know that but who knows who will read afterwards).
192.168.x.x, 172.16.x.x, 10.x.x.x are private addresses, meaning accessible locally only. Nearly all other adresses that you can see in a standard home network should be public adresses except 127.0.0.1.
So when you log to the router everything different from 192.168.x.x and 127.0.0.1 is your public address (you can type "my ip" in google too to get this one).
The goal is to update this IP as needed, the simplest way to do so is to get a fixed IP address from your provider or to create a shortcut with a Dynamic DNS service. Most routers are equipped with dyndns.com client and it's free as long as you log into the website once a month. Since you got only one public IP by internet connection, any device on your network can update this address, the router being the most logical since f it's rebooted it should update the client at boot time while the NAS won't. And since you need to do some conf on the NAS, I'd go for a setup in the router.
Then you have to tell your router that if something comes in from internet on a precise port (FTP being 20 and 21 TCP) then it should be followed to the router's IP. For that matter I advise to make sure the router always get the same IP. You can either set a fixed IP address directly on the NAS, or tell the router to always give the same IP to the NAS network card (identified by its MAC Adress).
To redirect the traffic you need to find out where it is on the router, it really depends. Some call this port forwarding/redirection, other call this NAT and for some it's in the firewall tab. By the way if you have firewall enabled, then you must set it to accept anything from port 20 & 21 TCP as well.
to summarize :
1°) get you public IP address to be fixed (either by your provider or by a dyndns service)
2°) make sure the NAS never change his IP
3°) redirect 20-21 TCP to the NAS IP
4°) allow 20-21 TCP to the NAS in the firewall.
Also keep in mind that FTP is (by far) not the most secure thing in the planet, I don't think that anyone would be interested in hacking a home network but if you have sensitive data on the NAS I advise to move them or to use something stronger than FTP (FTPS being the minimum, any kind of cyphered VPN being better but hard to setup).
192.168.x.x, 172.16.x.x, 10.x.x.x are private addresses, meaning accessible locally only. Nearly all other adresses that you can see in a standard home network should be public adresses except 127.0.0.1.
So when you log to the router everything different from 192.168.x.x and 127.0.0.1 is your public address (you can type "my ip" in google too to get this one).
The goal is to update this IP as needed, the simplest way to do so is to get a fixed IP address from your provider or to create a shortcut with a Dynamic DNS service. Most routers are equipped with dyndns.com client and it's free as long as you log into the website once a month. Since you got only one public IP by internet connection, any device on your network can update this address, the router being the most logical since f it's rebooted it should update the client at boot time while the NAS won't. And since you need to do some conf on the NAS, I'd go for a setup in the router.
Then you have to tell your router that if something comes in from internet on a precise port (FTP being 20 and 21 TCP) then it should be followed to the router's IP. For that matter I advise to make sure the router always get the same IP. You can either set a fixed IP address directly on the NAS, or tell the router to always give the same IP to the NAS network card (identified by its MAC Adress).
To redirect the traffic you need to find out where it is on the router, it really depends. Some call this port forwarding/redirection, other call this NAT and for some it's in the firewall tab. By the way if you have firewall enabled, then you must set it to accept anything from port 20 & 21 TCP as well.
to summarize :
1°) get you public IP address to be fixed (either by your provider or by a dyndns service)
2°) make sure the NAS never change his IP
3°) redirect 20-21 TCP to the NAS IP
4°) allow 20-21 TCP to the NAS in the firewall.
Also keep in mind that FTP is (by far) not the most secure thing in the planet, I don't think that anyone would be interested in hacking a home network but if you have sensitive data on the NAS I advise to move them or to use something stronger than FTP (FTPS being the minimum, any kind of cyphered VPN being better but hard to setup).
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