File Sharing - FTP, NAS, VPN, etc.

[tbone05420]

Hi all,

 

Kind of a general question.

 

I have two offices, around 10 employees, that need to share files. In your opinion what would be the most cost effective solution?

 

I have some NAS's in both locations that we can access via FTP, but is there a better solution?

 

Ideally I would like to be able to map a drive on my local computer where I could save files directly from applications and have them save directly to the remote NAS.

 

I would also like to be able to have certain folders restricted to certain users.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Tbone

 

 

[ngreenwood6]

I am not sure if this will work or not but if the NAS uses a port you can use port forwarding to access it. I would then have it password protected somehow but basically it would work like this. Forward the port to the device and then connect to it using the publice ip address like this. go to network map drive in my computer and type in the public ip address \\ipaddress\folder that you would want access to. Any one that was smart enough would be able to access this but chances are that no one would actually even try. If you password protected it would be fine in my opinion.

 

You can try this just to test. Set up dmz on your home router to a computer. Then set-up a share on that computer. Then go to www.whatismyip.com to get your ip address. When you have done that go somewhere outside of your network and try to map network drive like \\public ip address\shared folder and see if it works. just thought that would be interesting.

[peranha]

I would look into OpenVPN, it is a nice app.  We use it where I work, and I can access any computer in the company network from my computer, and we have over 150 sites around the US.  It is secure, so only users with a certificate can access these computers.  You set up a "server" computer, and all the other computers are clients, then make the certificate from the server, and install it on the client to access.  They all stay connected on one large network.