Accessing files remotely

So aside from home networking I have little no experience setting up complicated networks.

What's the difference between an always on desktop on your LAN hosting a shared external drive (in my case a built raid array I originally used for backups) and an actual dedicated server? What are the advantages/disadvantages of either setup? Based on my needs what would be the most cost effective solution. Is that solution also the best performing solution (in terms of how long it takes to read/access/transfer files, and security)?

Basically I want a local drop box on my desktop at home. I guess something by a cloud, but hosted physically by me and only to be accessed by me. I want to be able to drop files in at home to this drive, or a folder on the drive, and be able to access the files in those folders (pdf's, docx's, avi's, mp3's, or any install files I like to keep universally accessible) from my windows laptop or android tablet when not at home via wifi at school/work/public hotspots etc.

Using it for transfers is probably minimal.. but lets say I want to watch an old star trek episode instead of listen to Bob at the meeting, I want it to be responsive enough to stream smoothly without having to transfer a 400mb video file. Also security is important to me, I don't want the data being sent back and forth to be unencrypted. I'm not familiar with VPN's, but perhaps that could solve that issue. I use iVPN but it's not true site-to-site VPN its more like a VPN for anonymity.

Printing over this is not a function that I need.

It would be good if it was a solution that would allow sharing within and outside of the home LAN. ie) if I could stream these files downstairs on my own network and also outside of the network. I could set up the first situation easily with sharing, but that doesn't solve the other problem.

I imagine streaming will be a function of how fast my internet is at home and less dependent on the hardware and setup I use, but I have decently fast comcast cable, and I'm 99% sure they don't block VPN.

So what's the best way to accomplish this?

I appreciate any help guys, thanks.

 

I have a dedicated server running with consumer grade desktop hardware. It runs Xubuntu. I have it set to share its wired network connection with my laptop via a gigabit pci card. The server does on the fly transcoding and it's fast enough that I only wait 3 seconds whenever I scrub through a video and it takes about 5 seconds for a video to start playing.

Due to university restrictions, I can only have 1 wired device connected to the 1 ethernet port in my room. Getting a gigabit router was not an option since a decent router able to actually handle the gigabit speeds (seriously, my university rocks for internet access cause I can easily hit 50-60 MB/s or about 500 Mb/s on downloads). So I have my server running something like Plex for audio/video, an FTP server for WAN file access and samba for LAN file access.

FTP access is done through an SSH tunnel. I use WinSCP on Windows since it has SSH built-in. I use a 2048 bit key for security. The server is set to default block all incoming. Outgoing is allowed. However, FTP and samba are binded to the LAN ethernet port. To access them, an SSH tunnel is required.

That's all basically an example of how I do what you want to do. In your case, if you have a router, you can accomplish pretty much the same thing except that you don't need to have your server doing routing duty. You could put DD-WRT on your router and get the added security of SSH.

 

Thanks, I appreciate the reply. Honestly it sounds complicated, but probably sounds more so than it is. I'm familiar with sharing via samba, I used to run arch on my desktop but it's been a while.

Would the host computer need to be hardwired to the router in order to get the streaming speeds necessary? I have a desktop attached to the router, but not mine. I do have a linksys router that is compatible with DDWRT firmware though. It's a WRT54Gv4 so it's not N capable.

The way my set up is currently is I have my desktop always on, wirelessly connected to the router via a static IP. I guess I'm missing the basics so it's hard for me to understand.

How would my remote device find my home desktop.. comcast gives me a dynamic IP.

Also for comparison my utorrent speeds top out at 2-3 MB/s. Is that fast enough?

What about if I got a NAS and just hooked it up to my router?

Is there a single protocol or service I can use to access all different types of files from my slate? Can I use OpenVPN to connect to this desktop?

I just don't know where to begin. It seems like without a static IP I wouldn't be able to reliably and consistently connect to my home network.

I guess I just don't know what the first step is. I looked at some solutions like WHS and Amahi. But I just want something that will run on top of Win7 and share my external raid array on the interwebs.

 

There are several ways to do it. The simplest way would be to setup a FTP server. Use DynDNS to find your network remotely. Then you setup your router to port forward, and use a NON-STD port for outside access. Example FTP normally use Port 21, Use 45721. Any port > 1024 and <65535. Try to avoid ones used by game hosters. Remember you will be going through a FW so you will need to be in Passive mode when outside. Another way is VPN. This will give you a level of encryption on your data flow. I use a VPN Endpoint router which gives me full/compete access to all hardware on my network, just like I was local.

The limiting factor with most of this is your uplink speed from your ISP. On a lot of ISP the download speeds are good but the upload speeds are slow.

 

^ I've yet to set up my own FTP server.

Plan to just for testing purposes in the near future once I find the time...when my world slows down.

Umm, blue you seem to know what you're saying What do you use/or recommend for an FTP server. I believe Server '08 has a built-in one; I was planning to start there.

 

For your Star Trek example, Orb can stream from your PC to laptop/phone/tablet over the internet.

 

I just got the Netgear RND2000 v2 NAS that I connect to my router and gives me 2TB storage which can be accessed remotely. I am using it with my Sonos system I also recently purchased

 

My Snap's 4500's support FTP, so all I do is point my router to it. But I never use a default port setting for outside use for security reasons.

 

I see there are a lot of off-the-shelf NAS that support the FTP functionality, but what kind of FTP is this? Basic no encryption? Do any of these products come with some more secure protocol options like FTPS or SSH/FTP?

 

The Guardian OS v5.2 and up for Snaps supports FTPS. I have used it and it works fine. The GOS does support SSH but I have only used it locally for care access. I do not know if it can be used for outside access, but I do not see any reason why not. GOS 5.2 and lower can run as a DHCP server. The later releases removed this.

These units are design for Small to Medium Business. The smaller units 2 drives and less are pretty quite but all of the 4 drive and greater are server class, cooling fans can be noisy.

 

Addition encryption adds overhead to the data transfer.
If your ISP throughput is low, performance is horrible.

 

This is about an average speed test of my internet connection.

How is that for upload speed? Will encryption overhead kill it? I know some protocols area really light, OpenVPN barely puts any overhead on my bandwith! But I know other solutions use up a lot of bandwidth with their encryption overhead too..