Assign the NAS a fixed IP and setup the DDNS
It is recommended to assign a fixed IP to Turbo Station. (Since you may need to open the ports of services on your NAT router and forward them to the LAN IP address of Turbo Station and you do not want it to be changed.) Go to '
System Administration' > '
Network' > '
TCP/IP' and click on
to bring up the TCP/IP property window. Assign a static IP address for your NAS, besides, be sure to set the DNS server address as well or your will not be able to connect to the trackers.
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Most ISP will provide one or more dynamic public IP for Internet connection. (This applies to the situation that the IP sharing router acquires WAN IP from ISP by PPPoE or DHCP connection.) To set up a server, a fixed IP address or URL is necessary so that users can easily recall the server address to connect to. When a dynamic IP address is used, you can get a router that supports DDNS or simply use the built-in DDNS function on QNAP NAS, and through registering an easy-to-remember domain name from any DDNS provider to easily identify Turbo Station on the Internet, e.g. myqnap.dyndns.com.
Setup port forwarding on your router
If your Turbo Station is located behind the NAT router, you need to open the ports of the services on the NAT router and forward these ports to the fixed LAN IP of Turbo Station. This function is available on most routers found in the market and is often known as "Port Forwarding", "NAT Server" or "Virtual Server". Take FTP server as an example, you have to forward port 21 to the LAN IP of Turbo Station, e.g. forward TCP port 21 to 192.168.1.34. When the NAT router receives packets from the WAN side to the external port 21, the router will forward these packets to the LAN IP of Turbo Station. Moreover, to connect to the Turbo Station at home from WAN, you can simply forward traffic coming from port 8080 (the default management port) to the LAN IP of Turbo Station. (See below for an example setup on a Baffalo router.
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Some NAT routers provide DMZ settings. You can forward LAN IP address specified by DMZ to Turbo Station. When this setting is used, all ports from WAN to LAN will be forwarded to Turbo Station.
After completing these two settings, you can connect to the FTP server at home from the Internet via ftp://myqnap.dyndns.com to upload and download files.
Step-by-step configuration guide of FTP server
Go to 'Network Services' > 'FTP Service' and enable the FTP server.You may change the FTP port, set the maximum number of connections, configure Unicode support or whether to allow anonymous logins. After configuration, click 'Apply' for the settings to take effect.
Configure user and folder access right
The FTP access right on Turbo Station is consistent to the folder access right of network share folders configured through 'Access Right Management'. Therefore, after you configure the user/group account and folder access rights, you can use the same user account and password to connect to the FTP server of Turbo Station.
Go to 'Access Rights Management' > 'User' or 'Access Rights Management' > 'User Groups' if you need to create or delete user/group accounts and change the login password.
Go to 'Access Rights Management' > 'Share Folders' to manage your share folders and define the folder access rights (available modes includes full access, read only and deny access).
In the following example, we added an account guest123. Then we created a folder mp3music in 'Access Rights Management' and configured the access right to allow guest123 to access the folder mp3music. After successful configuration, users can login with the account of guest123 and the password to connect to the FTP server and read/write the files under mp3music folder.
Let's quickly test the FTP server we've just enabled by entering ftp://username:password@Turbo-Station-IP_address/ directly in the Windows Explorer, e.g. ftp://admin:admin@192.168.1.34 to connect to the FTP server. Upon successful log on you should see a list of shared folders the logged-in user is allowed to see and read/write to the files stored under them.
When you are connecting to the FTP server behind the NAT/firewall router from the Internet, you have to enter your WAN IP address or DDNS name as the IP address, e.g. ftp://admin:admin@myqnap.dyndns.com.
You can also use some popular FTP client softwares, e.g. CuteFTP or FileZilla.
Conclusion
FTP server is one of the convenient functions of QNAP Turbo Station. FTP server can be set up by Turbo Station. The web-based configuration is simple and fast to complete. Establishing an FTP server can now be done by anyone. It is no longer a complicated task that can only be completed by IT professionals. Moreover, Turbo Station's energy-saving, fanless, and aluminum alloy case design enable absolutely silent and stable performance. It is an ideal choice for home and small office.
