And finally it came! My LG N2B1 with 2x1TB drives. Wonderful piece of gadget in great design. I unpacked it quickly and turned it on. Everything went smooth, though the drives weren't formatted and partitioned when it arrived, but that was easily done through the Web Menu. Also, this is not what this post is about!
One of the cool things LG gives their customers is a DDNS service. They offer you a domain - your_name.lgnas.com - so you can access your NAS not just locally but globally. Just as cool as this sounds as much a pain in the ass it can be to set it up. It took me hours of googling and twice as many hours taking care of my head-aches. My problems were mostly related to port-forwarding, and therefore the guide will cover that primarily. So, here is a small guide that can hopefully help some. I can recommend canyouseeme.org while testing.
Connect to the NAS and enable DDNS. A pretty obvious step. Log into the web menu of your NAS, go to "Remote access" and enable DDNS. Here you must also choose a domain name (make it cool!) and password. Clicking enable should initiate a process, this takes a little while. After it has been enabled your (external) IP-address should be revealed. Copy this to clipboard.
Basically, you can just try to see if it works now. Open a browser and paste the IP into the address-line or type your_name.lgnas.com. Both probably gives you errors, right? If yes, read on. If no, damn, you're a lucky bastard!
So, what's the hold-up? Your connection is being blocked! We need to open up some ports by port-forwarding. This process requires changing some settings in the router, so let's go there now. In a browser type 192.168.1.1 or whatever your router's IP is. Go to port-forwarding - it's located different on different routers. On my Linksys router (WRT160N) it's a tab called "Applications and gaming".
Let's port-forward! We're gonna do 4 different ports: 21 (FTP), 80 (WEB), 9090 (FileView) and 9091 (Torrent). For each, choose a name, enter the port in both external/internal, choose both (UDP+TCP). The IP-address is the address of the NAS. Now, enable them.
Does it work now? Check the browser by entering either your external IP from before or the domain-name. If it works, hurray! If not, read on. We'll get there soon!
Basically, it should work by doing the above, given you've done everything right. So what NOW is the problem? It can be one of three. Either 1) your ISP is blocking the ports for security reasons. If you think this is the case, you must contact them and have them open the ports and can stop reading on OR 2) there is another router in your network! OR 3) Both.
Option 2 was of course my issue. I had not realized that my modem also worked as a router! My setup is a ZyXeL modem/router (wired) to a Linksys WRT160N (wireless) router. My problem was therefore, that the requests never got through to the Linksys and obviously could not forward the ports to the NAS! So basic, but yet so easy to miss. What to do is this.
Open a browser and access your OTHER router. In my case the IP was 10.0.0.1. You will be prompted for a password. Default on ZyXeL is 1234, but a much longer password had been set by my ISP (Cybercity), so I had to retrieve it from a piece of paper hidden away in a very dusty box. Anyways, when you've gotten access to the router, we must do another port-forward, so go there. Now, forward ALL ports (1-64000) to your other router. This is done by doing a port-forward range, 1 as start and 64000 as end. Now, the important thing this is getting the IP correct for the router. It is NOT 192.168... Instead, it will most likely be 10.0.0.2 or similar. Enable the port-forwarding.
Let's check the domain once again. Does it work? I really hope so, since there are no more steps in this guide. Have fun with your remote accessible NAS :)
February 16th, 2010 - 18:12
Thank you so much!!!
I followed you guide step by step, and after 5 minutes it worked perfectly.. It couldn’t be easier. What annoys me is that I didn’t think of it myself :)
February 18th, 2010 - 00:05
I’m glad I could help!
February 23rd, 2010 - 16:21
Thank you – really helpful.
Any idea how I can setup the iTunes function so I can sync both the LG Nas server service and also the music folder on my iMac ?
It really annoys me that I can’t let them talk together.
Right now I transfer music to the LG Nas and my iTunes is setup in advanced settings to my iMac. Then I can add new files from the nas and the iMac will automaticly make a new folder with the new band, muic number ect.
But the NAS still only have the new music item as a file and won’t organize by artitis, album and so on.
I guess I could change the advanced setting in iTunes to be LG Nas – service – iTunes – music…
But then the opposite problem occours and the iMac won’t make the automatic settings of the new music items.
Best Regards
Claus
February 25th, 2010 - 13:02
Hey Claus
I’m not quite sure I follow. Do you have all the music on the NAS? I suppose that would be the easiest – just to have everything in the iTunes server folder on the NAS.
I had everything on the NAS for a while, but ultimately got too annoyed by the sudden lags and delayed starts due to the nas either working or waking up from sleep.
/Johan
March 8th, 2010 - 20:32
Hej Claus
Et mega stort MANGE TAK
/Anakin