New features preferred to see in firmware. ipsec gui, Google drive

RussellInCincinnati said:

Could you provide us a link to a description of a NAS Network Attached Storage box that does this?

Click to expand...

I think there's a QNAP app that interfaces with it, but I never really looked into how it worked or what it did.

Couldn't you just do a samba share to a shared google drive folder on windows for example?

Valentino said:

Didn't understand you completely. I meant synchronization with Google Drive, not only with Asus webstorage and Dropbox....

Click to expand...

You meant to replace every single instance of google drive sync by a single one handled on the router writing to its usb drive? This will probably have code integration with google drive api.

https://github.com/Grive/grive ... seems to be a linux client but I think it is a bit stretch out on the scope of rmerlin firmware goal.

tijaune said:

You meant to replace every single instance of google drive sync by a single one handled on the router writing to its usb drive? This will probably have code integration with google drive api.

https://github.com/Grive/grive ... seems to be a linux client but I think it is a bit stretch out on the scope of rmerlin firmware goal.

Click to expand...

Thanks tijaune and RMerlin. Am seeing the docs here for the QNAP app to continuously synchronize a NAS folder with a Google drive account:
https://www.qnap.com/i/useng/trade_teach/con_show.php?op=showone&cid=43

interesting to note that the current QNAP app is limited to watching perhaps 60000 files.

It is quite nice that Merlin software already lets you share a USB device's root folder with a short network name, and support up to 10 different SMB users.

This thread has made me think once again about how much NAS functionality it is reasonable to look for on a device that is not sold as a NAS, and has maybe 0.25 gigabytes of RAM with which to handle everything. Would we for example think it a great design decision for a network with 100 or 1000 users, each one perhaps harboring 100000 files, say 100 million files total, to rely on a WiFi router with 250 million bytes of RAM as their corporate file server? Because it would save the 100 to 1000 users $100 US dollars to not buy a low end NAS box from eBay?

My vote would be to assign zero priority to RMerlin extending the file-sharing functionality of Asus WiFi routers beyond what is now provided, unless Asus does so in a way that is almost no work for the Merlin project and it takes almost no RAM and has no noticeable performance impact on any currently supported features.

The one thing can think of to ask Asus directly, would be for USB 3.0 hub support at USB 3.0 speeds. But even there USB 2.0 hub support is already there and works fine...considering how inexpensive a real NAS would be for users where USB 2.0 speeds are "not enough".

A individual could just as well buy a raspi or similar to set up a nas sync, I like open source myself even though I can't read or understand the code. Example: syncthing, there are lots and lots of tutorials on setting up various servers, nas, dnla etc...

Thanks for the answers guys!

Hello everyone! Just to bring the topic again... Is it possible to add more accounts support to "smart sync" function? Today are available; asus web storage (default), dropbox, ftp and samba. Would be nice to have google drive among others, specially "thislife" from shutterfly, which has unlimited photo storage. Thanks!

I have a Synology DS-214+ NAS. It has a IPSEC server and client package. I also have built-in sync package for Google Drive and OneDrive.

asus and broadcom still use an ancient linux kernel, so we need to pressure them to use something modern. Then that will improve merlin's firmware as he can then take advantage of more modern features and security.

I'm not touching Smart Sync (or anything related to AiCloud). Not only it's partly closed source, but I feel that such cloud features on a firewall appliance is a really bad idea. If it were me, I'd totally disable these features, for security reasons.

if you want to use l2tp/ipsec or cisco compatible l2tpv3 just install in nvram softether binary:
http://files.lancethepants.com/Binaries/SoftEtherVPN/

just PM me and i can help you set it up