[SOLVED] NAS while using an access point

[Hotwings_za]

Hi Guys,
I’m considering getting a WD my cloud home but have a few issues.
I am looking to back up files from my phone to a hard drive wirelessly the WD my cloud would he perfect but don’t know if it will work for me
I reside in a little cottage. The main wifi router is in a separate building to mine and I have run a lan cable to my place and plugged it into a wireless access point.
How could I get the WD my cloud working in my place?
My current setup:

• Main router
• Port 1 : Lan to Switch (in my place)

*Switch
Port 1 : Lan from main router
Port 2 : Lan to access point (my only available WIFI)
Port 3 : Hopefully if at all possible Lan to WD mycloud or other NAS that I’m able to access wirelessly.
Thanks in advance

 

[kanewolf]

Hi Guys,
I’m considering getting a WD my cloud home but have a few issues.
I am looking to back up files from my phone to a hard drive wirelessly the WD my cloud would he perfect but don’t know if it will work for me
I reside in a little cottage. The main wifi router is in a separate building to mine and I have run a lan cable to my place and plugged it into a wireless access point.
How could I get the WD my cloud working in my place?
My current setup:

• Main router
• Port 1 : Lan to Switch (in my place)

*Switch
Port 1 : Lan from main router
Port 2 : Lan to access point (my only available WIFI)
Port 3 : Hopefully if at all possible Lan to WD mycloud or other NAS that I’m able to access wirelessly.
Thanks in advance

Do you want to protect your NAS from anybody in the "Main" building from accessing it? If so, then a router rather than a switch might be better. You could treat the wire coming from the main building as the "internet" and be completely isolated.

Otherwise, your switch should work.

 

[Hotwings_za]

Is it as simple as using another router in my place?

The people in the "main building" are my in-laws and not really tech savvy so not worried about them accessing the NAS

 

[kanewolf]

Is it as simple as using another router in my place?

The people in the "main building" are my in-laws and not really tech savvy so not worried about them accessing the NAS

Using a router in your place puts a double NAT in the network. This can cause problems if you need an open NAT or need to port forward for gaming.
If you can get access to the primary router admin, then the main thing is to look at the DHCP server. Optimally you would want a static IP address on your NAS. That static IP needs to be outside the address range of the DHCP server.

 

[Hotwings_za]

I must say this is all is a little confusing for me.

For someone who doesn't know much about networking, is there not a extremely simple solution to this issue?

 

[SamirD]

The simple answer is yes, you can connect the nas to the lan port and access it wirelessly.

The caveats are that the main network will also be able to see it, and that depending on what ip address is assigned to it and if it changes, your accessibility may fluctuate as you may need to figure out the ever changing ip address.

 

[dudeman509]

It should work fine, and the MyCloud requires login to access anything on the drive, so that's not really an issue either. You may need to access the main router admin page and set up port forwarding outside the network to access it outside the home.

I had a MyCloud Gen 1 and found it pretty underwhelming, but it was nice to be able to back up stuff from my phone and access files when not home (albeit through the clunky MyCloud interface). The single drive models are EXTREMELY slow when indexing anything, and mine thrashed the poor little drive inside to death in 2.5 years - just longer than the warranty.

I've since built a Synology DS and it has so much more power/functionality. Heck, the Plex support alone is nice (I believe some MyCloud units support this - EX2 and up?)