[matt8445]

Hi All,

I have a LaCie Network Space Max 2TB NAS (Network Space Max). I have it on my home network and it works as it should without issue while I am at home. My issue is what is the best way that people might recommend that I do to access it remotely. Lacie has a setting in there where I can go to my drive in a web browser and view it. However this is through a browser and quite frankly it has not been working thus far.

What I am hoping is someone has some insight on how I might be able to set up a VPN or similar to my home network to access it as a Network Attached Storage as it does on my home network when I am at work or on the road. I would prefer that then using the browser interface.

My network is connected through a cable internet connection to a Motorola SurfBoard SBG6580 Gateway. I have a switch in my home network as well. I am not sure how to set up a VPN for my home network.

Any thought?

Matt

[smax013]

matt8445, on 05 March 2012 - 08:12 AM, said:

Hi All,

I have a LaCie Network Space Max 2TB NAS (Network Space Max). I have it on my home network and it works as it should without issue while I am at home. My issue is what is the best way that people might recommend that I do to access it remotely. Lacie has a setting in there where I can go to my drive in a web browser and view it. However this is through a browser and quite frankly it has not been working thus far.

What I am hoping is someone has some insight on how I might be able to set up a VPN or similar to my home network to access it as a Network Attached Storage as it does on my home network when I am at work or on the road. I would prefer that then using the browser interface.

My network is connected through a cable internet connection to a Motorola SurfBoard SBG6580 Gateway. I have a switch in my home network as well. I am not sure how to set up a VPN for my home network.

Any thought?

Matt

What kind of computer are you using? Mac? Or Windows computer? From a brief scan of the documentation, the only way to fully do what you want would be to actually connect to a HOME computer that has access to the NAS. I believe that Apple's "Back to Mac" function should allow you to see an attached NAS drive of the Mac you are remotely connecting to...but I don't recall for sure.

The other option would be to use FTP as it appears that NAS does allow for FTP access. You would still need to use some sort of FTP client, but it might be better than the web browser. I will note that FTP is not the most secure protocol in the world, but you should be able to setup some sort of VPN connection that you could then "tunnel" the FTP connection through.

I will further note that ANY "home grown" option will tend to force you to either know your IP address at home, which can be tough with most home broadband connections since they use dynamic IP addresses, or setup a dynamic DNS service for your home network.

[matt8445]

smax013, on 05 March 2012 - 08:34 AM, said:

matt8445, on 05 March 2012 - 08:12 AM, said:

Hi All,

I have a LaCie Network Space Max 2TB NAS (Network Space Max). I have it on my home network and it works as it should without issue while I am at home. My issue is what is the best way that people might recommend that I do to access it remotely. Lacie has a setting in there where I can go to my drive in a web browser and view it. However this is through a browser and quite frankly it has not been working thus far.

What I am hoping is someone has some insight on how I might be able to set up a VPN or similar to my home network to access it as a Network Attached Storage as it does on my home network when I am at work or on the road. I would prefer that then using the browser interface.

My network is connected through a cable internet connection to a Motorola SurfBoard SBG6580 Gateway. I have a switch in my home network as well. I am not sure how to set up a VPN for my home network.

Any thought?

Matt

What kind of computer are you using? Mac? Or Windows computer? From a brief scan of the documentation, the only way to fully do what you want would be to actually connect to a HOME computer that has access to the NAS. I believe that Apple's "Back to Mac" function should allow you to see an attached NAS drive of the Mac you are remotely connecting to...but I don't recall for sure.

The other option would be to use FTP as it appears that NAS does allow for FTP access. You would still need to use some sort of FTP client, but it might be better than the web browser. I will note that FTP is not the most secure protocol in the world, but you should be able to setup some sort of VPN connection that you could then "tunnel" the FTP connection through.

I will further note that ANY "home grown" option will tend to force you to either know your IP address at home, which can be tough with most home broadband connections since they use dynamic IP addresses, or setup a dynamic DNS service for your home network.

My Computer info is as follows

HP Elite Book 8730 Mobile Workstation
Windows 7 64 Bit Professional

I also have a Iomega Home Media NAS cloud edition. One cool thing with that is it maps directories on the drive as attached storage to the computer. That would really be a cool option, but I do not believe this product comes with anything to do this.

[smax013]

matt8445, on 05 March 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

My Computer info is as follows

HP Elite Book 8730 Mobile Workstation
Windows 7 64 Bit Professional

I also have a Iomega Home Media NAS cloud edition. One cool thing with that is it maps directories on the drive as attached storage to the computer. That would really be a cool option, but I do not believe this product comes with anything to do this.

Do you mean that the Iomega will map as a drive on your computer when you are away from the house? Or are you talking about strictly while you are at home?

If it is the latter, then the LaCie should also permit you to map a share as a drive (i.e. say the "G:" drive).

A VPN is mainly there to create a secure connection to your home "network". You will also need something that you "connect to" on the network. To my knowledge, that LaCie will only allow you to connect remotely by way of FTP or essentially HTTP. I believe you would need some other "intermediary" device that would allow you to see that NAS as a local network drive. But, then I am not really an "expert" in this area.

[matt8445]

smax013, on 05 March 2012 - 11:04 AM, said:

matt8445, on 05 March 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

My Computer info is as follows

HP Elite Book 8730 Mobile Workstation
Windows 7 64 Bit Professional

I also have a Iomega Home Media NAS cloud edition. One cool thing with that is it maps directories on the drive as attached storage to the computer. That would really be a cool option, but I do not believe this product comes with anything to do this.

Do you mean that the Iomega will map as a drive on your computer when you are away from the house? Or are you talking about strictly while you are at home?

If it is the latter, then the LaCie should also permit you to map a share as a drive (i.e. say the "G:" drive).

A VPN is mainly there to create a secure connection to your home "network". You will also need something that you "connect to" on the network. To my knowledge, that LaCie will only allow you to connect remotely by way of FTP or essentially HTTP. I believe you would need some other "intermediary" device that would allow you to see that NAS as a local network drive. But, then I am not really an "expert" in this area.

Yeah that iomega drive maps the directories away from the network it is connected to. It is strange. It creates kinda a phantom network that it connects to. When I go to my network and sharing center I am connected to multiple networks one is labeled as "unidentified" as soon as I disconnect from that I disconnect from those directories. Really strange, but works, and is kinda cool.

Anyway talking to one of our it guys here he said the FTP approach is my best bet. I think that is what I will do when I can figure out how to do that. Now to google....

[smax013]

matt8445, on 05 March 2012 - 11:20 AM, said:

Yeah that iomega drive maps the directories away from the network it is connected to. It is strange. It creates kinda a phantom network that it connects to. When I go to my network and sharing center I am connected to multiple networks one is labeled as "unidentified" as soon as I disconnect from that I disconnect from those directories. Really strange, but works, and is kinda cool.

Anyway talking to one of our it guys here he said the FTP approach is my best bet. I think that is what I will do when I can figure out how to do that. Now to google....

Turning on the FTP access for that LaCie drive should be fairly easy...here are the instructions for it: http://manuals.lacie...-shares-via-ftp

The tough part will be getting the IP address to establish the IP address. You will need to using port forwarding on your router to "route" all FTP "calls" to the NAS's IP address on your local network (likely 192.168.xxx.xxx), but that should be relatively straight forward...just will depend on your router. The tougher part is that you likely have a dynamic IP address for you Internet connection, which means in theory it can change (you might typically have the same IP address for long periods of time, but it could renew to a new IP address every once and a while). You can just write down the IP address you get assigned from your ISP and just hope that it does not change, but the better option is to use dynamic DNS function (this will require you to get a "registered domain name", I believe). All of this is not too tough, but it can be a pain to setup.

The other thing to keep in mind is that "plain jane" FTP is a VERY unsecure protocol. Thus, unless you also setup a VPN connection, you should NOT have critical files on any shares that you allow access to by way of the FTP port.