Connecting to a NAS across the Internet

[garethEds]

Hi,

 

I have a NAS box here at home connected to my ADSL Router. It feeds my house with media such as films and music.

 

Now - what I want to do is map a drive on my laptop in school to this NAS box - which is at home. I have it mapped on my wifes laptop at home - but that is on the house network.

 

Besides FTP is it possible to connect the NAS box to the internet and map it as a drive?

 

I wonder if my work laptop would link to : \\ broadbandipaddress>\media

 

But what settings on the firewall to let it through? WOuld I need to open ports? It just works on the home network when I use \\192.168.2.5\media

 

Any advice on the router setup would be appreciated,

 

Gareth (hoping he has explained this good enough)

[dwhyte85]

Hello,

 

You'd need ports 137, 138, 139 & 445 (these are printer & filesharing ports).

 

I've never done it... but you'd need port forwarding on the above ports on your router to your static IP assigned to your NAS.

[mac_shinobi]

not to sure ( maybe someone can confirm ) but am guessing it will depend on what transfer method you use to transfer the data protocol wise ie FTP, SMB etc and also if you are doing it securly ie SFTP / port 22 and ssl uses 443 I think.

[dwhyte85]

SMB is port 445 ;-)

[mac_shinobi]

SMB is port 445 ;-)

 

I posted and saw it came up and did mention that I was not sure but also wanted to get confirmation as would be handy to know exactly what ports to open.

[powdarrmonkey]

Do not do this with an unencrypted protocol, and certainly don't do it with SMB or NetBIOS, which are historically very weak.

 

NetBIOS, SMB:

+ hooks nicely into Windows

+ reasonably efficient at transfer

- your password is transmitted as a weak hash

- historically very weak

- will make your line a honeypot for attacks

 

FTP:

+ fairly convenient, good transfer ratio

- transmits password and all data in the clear (unprotected)

- very cheap to brute-force

 

SSL:

+ very secure, encrypts all communications with RSA on X.509 material

+ web-browser interface means no additional software

- one-way transfer, unless your NAS support HTTP PUT

- limited support in domestic NASes

 

sFTP (FTP inside SSH):

+ very secure, encrypts all communications with RSA or DSA

+ compresses quite well

- most domestic NASes won't have support for it

 

Plain SSH:

+ can do all sorts of cool things

+ very secure, encrypts all communications with RSA or DSA

- needs reasonable command-line skill or additional software

[dwhyte85]

Agreed, not necessarily the best method through SMB... put hamachi on a home machine, copy the files to the home machine, connect up through hamachi and connect securely and use SMB through this method? Sounds easiest and pretty secure.