[SOLVED] Provide files via Wireless USB drive while not connected to Internet

[gregslife]

I provide training to 100’s of folks a year. Part of that training requires that up to 40 participants at one time log onto the internet and access proprietary documents for the training.
I occasionally find training somewhere that wifi is slow or absent. In that case I need to find a solution. I am looking at setting up a wifi router with a usb drive that provides access to the files for the training without having to be on the internet.

Is this possible and if so, where can I find directions to do this and a recommended router?

 

[bill001g]

There are a lot of router that have that ability. Hard to say which you would want. All pretty much have the ability to access the storage even if no internet is available. In general they are not that fast but likely much better than downloading over a slow internet.

If you need high performance or very large files a actual NAS would likely perform better and you can plug that into any router.

 

[gregslife]

There are a lot of router that have that ability. Hard to say which you would want. All pretty much have the ability to access the storage even if no internet is available. In general they are not that fast but likely much better than downloading over a slow internet.

If you need high performance or very large files a actual NAS would likely perform better and you can plug that into any router.

Thank you bill001g. Can you say more about a NAS? For a solution, I need five of them and would be shipping these across country to training sites and back.

 

[bill001g]

There are a bunch of nas devices. They are pretty much disk drive enclosures with ethernet cables. You likely need nothing special.

 

[kanewolf]

Since you used the word "shipping" and WIFI, I would recommend you stick with a WIFI router and a USB3 SSD. The SSD will travel better than a mechanical disk and will have the best performance for writing data to it. A 500GB SSD like this https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147643 will give you lots of space. There are some routers with USB 3.1 which can support 100MB/s read speeds. I don't think you have to have that but a router with USB3 should beat most internet deliveries.

 

[Alabalcho]

May I drop another hint. Apart from the router, build a simple Raspberry Pi "computer" which will run a simple web site to host your site. You might try OpenMediaVault / NextCloud etc platforms for easy file hosting. This will allow your participant to get the files using almost any device, not just a PC able to access files over network share

 

[kanewolf]

May I drop another hint. Apart from the router, build a simple Raspberry Pi "computer" which will run a simple web site to host your site. You might try OpenMediaVault / NextCloud etc platforms for easy file hosting. This will allow your participant to get the files using almost any device, not just a PC able to access files over network share

It looks like you can setup the WIFI on a PI as an access point, so that would definitely work. More work than a router that already supports SMB and FTP but also more generic.