Remote access to NAS

[scottyja]

Hello. I'm not sure I'm looking at all of this the right way and would love some guidance.

I currently have a Media Center 2005 computer, xbox 360 and a desktop computer connected with a gigabit switch (the house was prewired). Additionally, I have a wireless router (WRT54G) for our two laptops. Things are working great, but currently all media files are on the desktop in the office (backed up to a 2nd hard drive) and we're running out of space. I'm tired of having the desktop on when I don't need it to access music/movies on the MCE, so I'm going to pick up a Zyxel NSA-220 (recommended on this site!) with 2x750GB drives.

That would be the end of it until I learned I could FTP files from the NAS. This sounds great, as I could access a lot of the files when traveling for work or for any other reason. My main concern is security accessing the files with FTP.

My only real requirement is securely getting files from the NAS via FTP. Right now I'm thinking a VPN server between the cable modem and the wireless router. I've thought about monowall or clarkConnect, but these seem like overkill, as the wireless router already has a firewall. I've also looked at some dedicated firewall/vpn clients (Zyxel P1 and such), but these looked very complex and the IPSec setup for Windows is more than a little daunting. My next thought is a custom firmware on the WRT54G (such as DD-WRT or Sveasoft) to allow me PPTP access. Assuming I use sufficiently complex passwords (10-12 ch@ract3rs), would PPTP be sufficient? Any other methods I should consider?

 

[scotty]

With good passwords PPTP would be sufficient I would think.

Personally, I say go for monowall/pfsense. Sure, they're a little overkill for most people but if you have a spare PC lying about and a couple NIC's, you can add a lot of functionality. I was personally never a huge fan of the alternate firmwares for the WRT routers. You also have to make sure you either have a WRT54GL model or pre-V5 (I think) unit or else the alternate firmware wont work well or at all. But if you can do it, they definately add a lot of functionality to the WRT, such as PPTP.

 

[scottyja]

I actually have all the parts for monowall and will probably still do it for fun, I'm just less excited to have that spare PC on 24/7. It's only a 250 Watt PSU, but will really heat up my closet (not the best for AZ summers). The idea of getting one of the embedded systems sounds really fun, but that's a ways down the road, since I couldn't really find one sub $50.

I think I'll give the firmware a try. It's a v3.1 WRT54G, so it should work. We'll see how it goes.

As a side note, I realized I left "no email alerts" off my pro/con list for the NSA-220, so now I'm back to deciding between the DNS-323 or the NSA-220. I guess that's a discussion for a different forum...

Thanks for your help!

 

[bigclaw]

I use a WRT54GL with a Tamato firmware mod that supports OpenVPN. I use that to get access to my DNS-323 at home. Works flawlessly.

Another option is that the DNS-323 actually has an open-source community itself. I am pretty sure somebody actually had an OpenVPN package for it, so you can use it as a VPN server directly. The router then only needs to do some port-forwarding and becomes otherwise uninvolved in your VPN session.