Remote access question

[jemsurvey]

Hi all,

Very new and a novice to NAS and networking. I will soon be getting my first NAS and one of the uses I wish is remote access. In one of the NAS reviews it was mentioned that SNB's preferred method for remotely accessing a NAS was by "hosted portal-based methods" rather than opening router ports. Can anyone explain this to me and/or point me toward how-to articles on the subject.

If I'm not in the right forum for this please let me know.

Your help is appreciated.
John

 

[stevech]

Hi all,

Very new and a novice to NAS and networking. I will soon be getting my first NAS and one of the uses I wish is remote access. In one of the NAS reviews it was mentioned that SNB's preferred method for remotely accessing a NAS was by "hosted portal-based methods" rather than opening router ports. Can anyone explain this to me and/or point me toward how-to articles on the subject.

If I'm not in the right forum for this please let me know.

Your help is appreciated.
John

An answer on the tangent.. you may wish to use the NAS vendors' client side software (PC, Android, Apple) - they have apps for remote access to files, photos, videos, music, rather than using a browser. The latter is also possible though not as secure or user-friendly.

Remote access covers the above, as well as remote admin login to manage the NAS- which is risky if enabled on the internet, but do-able if you setup the NASes certificate for SSL/TLS. A bit complicated. But Synology, QNAP and perhaps others have all these topics nailed as routine.

I don't know the term "hosted portal-based methods"; it may refer to some sort of proxy.

 

[mdgm]

Very new and a novice to NAS and networking. I will soon be getting my first NAS and one of the uses I wish is remote access. In one of the NAS reviews it was mentioned that SNB's preferred method for remotely accessing a NAS was by "hosted portal-based methods" rather than opening router ports. Can anyone explain this to me and/or point me toward how-to articles on the subject.

The software Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that NAS vendors use definitely are a more secure way to access your NAS than opening ports on the router.

A virtual private network is a way to securely access another network with most of the functionality you'd have if you were actually in the remote location.

Of course you could setup your own VPN and manage it (people have been using their own for several years long before NAS vendors started releasing cloud offerings), but setting up your own VPN is too complicated for most users. So an easy to setup software VPN coming with a NAS is great.

By portal SNB might mean going to a webpage in your web browser to access the NAS remotely. I know for the NETGEAR ReadyNAS (I work for NETGEAR) you can go to readycloud.netgear.com and setup remote access using that.

We have a video on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzrWNe9CP2s

Other NAS manufacturers may have something similar.

Another advantage of a VPN over opening ports is that you can access data using Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), Windows File Sharing (SMB/CIFS) similarly to how you would on the local network (though in the case of the software VPN for your NAS you would need to be able to install a client on your PC that you use remotely to do this, this may not be possible in all cases e.g. your IT department might not allow you to install software on your work machine, so being able to view and download files via a webpage is useful too).