Now Your QNAP NAS Can Be A Wireless Base Station

[Julio Urquidi]

Owners of TVS-x73 series and other QNAP NASes with PCIe slots can now go wireless by using QNAP’s new WirelessAP Station app and select PCIe wireless network cards,

Based on QTS LXC Container and OpenWrt, the new Wireless AP feature lets users connect directly to the NAS over a secure wireless network, and will even work with multiple wireless PCIe cards creating multiple APs for more options.

The list of compatible cards are all TP-Link models, including TL-WDN4800 N900, TL-WDN3800 N600, TL-WN881ND N300, and TL-WN781ND N150. No other brands were mentioned.

The WirelessAP Station is available now via the QTS App Center. Information about TP-Link's PCIe wireless networking cards can be found on the company’s website.

 

[sfx2000]

QNAP's LinuX Container (LXC) is a very astute move, between the example above (running OpenWRT inside a container), and the Linux Station...

Very cool stuff - thanks for sharing this one!

 

[vdemarco]

QNAP's LinuX Container (LXC) is a very astute move, between the example above (running OpenWRT inside a container), and the Linux Station...

Very cool stuff - thanks for sharing this one!

This seems like a great idea, nice cheap way of getting a faster upgradable router. What does everyone think about this???

 

[sfx2000]

This has been brought up before - the OP's post above is using LXC and OpenWRT, but on the main site there's a good article that leverages QNAP's Virtualization Station and SophosUTM for similar purposes...

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-howto/32558-how-to-use-a-qnap-nas-as-a-utm

QTS has evolved quite a bit since that article, but the main concept is the same, QNAP has done some great work here, and when we see the other thread about Untangle, this could easily be done on a QNAP network attached storage device.

The challenge is cost - a fully kitted out 4 or 5 bay NAS can easily run into four figure range...

If one is a small to medium business however, this can be a compelling solution...

 

[RMerlin]

If one is a small to medium business however, this can be a compelling solution...

Aren't you the one always advocating against sharing multiple services on a device that acts as your router/firewall?

Virtualization is not a panacea - there's been cases in the past where a guest could compromise a host. Same could happen with compartments. It's rare, but it's still as much a risk as having a router share VPN duties.

 

[sfx2000]

Aren't you the one always advocating against sharing multiple services on a device that acts as your router/firewall?

Virtualization is not a panacea - there's been cases in the past where a guest could compromise a host. Same could happen with compartments. It's rare, but it's still as much a risk as having a router share VPN duties.

I am a proponent of keeping a degree of separation - just pointing out though that it can be done (doesn't mean it should, however)

QNAP's virtualization station solution leverages KVM/QEMU - KVM has had some security issues with the libraries that support the virtual environment (this is not QNAP specific, BTW). QNAP, for their part, has been good about rolling fixes in.

Their container solution leverages LXC (and includes Docker for container management) - QNAP's Docker is a little on the older side (1.11.2 from Sept 2016), but it's a full on Docker environment...

Where things get interesting about running SophosUTM or Untangle inside KVM - QNAP has several models with 10GbE connectivity, and several models that are based on the Intel "big" chips - e.g. Core i3/i5/i7

And that can be a compelling solution as it has the connectivity options and the brute horsepower to make it a cost effective solution.

 

[vdemarco]

This has been brought up before - the OP's post above is using LXC and OpenWRT, but on the main site there's a good article that leverages QNAP's Virtualization Station and SophosUTM for similar purposes...

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-howto/32558-how-to-use-a-qnap-nas-as-a-utm

QTS has evolved quite a bit since that article, but the main concept is the same, QNAP has done some great work here, and when we see the other thread about Untangle, this could easily be done on a QNAP network attached storage device.

The challenge is cost - a fully kitted out 4 or 5 bay NAS can easily run into four figure range...

If one is a small to medium business however, this can be a compelling solution...

You are right but if i wanted to kit it out anyhow, i guess i save on a new wireless device. But then you would end up spending 2000-3000 just on hard disks etc..
I was more interested in how stable, configurable etc, this would be .