Me and a few people are thinking about hooking up a NAS drive at our school, but we are wondering how about going about this. Ive looked at routers and crap, but im not 100% sure if I am right. I am thinking that if we buy a wireless 802.11g router and hook it up in one of our classrooms with NAS attached through an RJ-45 ethernet jack, that we can plug in USB wifi adapters and be able to access the drive thats plugged into the router. Would the router need internet connection? If so, we can do that, but where would I plug the drive into the router? I know that if the internet connection was needed, it would be one of the 4 RJ-45 output ports for direct connection. Would buying a router and NAS and hooking up the NAS to one of the LAN ports and an internet connection to the WAN port. If I was able to hook this up like that, what would I need to be able to access the drive hooked up on the LAN? coul i use a program from the internet, or would a window application have to do it?

First what are you trying to store on the NAS? Also what is the configuration of the schools network? What routers they uses, servers OS, do they uses Novel products for desktop management?

First you are going to need a network connection regardless (NAS = Network Attached Storage). The issue you might have though is since you are putting this on your schools network its not going to be to secure, and most schools IT departments dont like NAS units being set up because most of the time people uses them for torrented files. Also if you are tring to do this in a public school forget it because they will take the unit and more then likely suspend u for trying.

Next you wont want a router unless you are going to try and subnet your network with the NAS on it from the rest of the network. If you have never worked with subnets it will be tricky and you are going to want to do lots of reading up before hand.

Putting in the router really wont help you unless you subnet it because without the subnet you are going to get cut off from the rest of the network (no internet basically)

My suggestion would be first, find out if you can actually hook this thing up to your schools network without getting in trouble. If you can buy a unit and configure (configuration will depend on your schools network). Stay away from using a router because if you have never worked with subnets its going to take to long of a time to get configured and working properly.

This post has been edited by lockdown: 1 Apr, 2008 - 06:33 PM

Ok, I don't plan on doing the router option anymore. Well this drive is not going to be found, I know exactly where to hide it and it will still be on the network. On our computer system at school, We have the limited accounts, specail accounts for me and about 10 other people and then the admin accounts. If I was able to Just plug it straight into one of the Hubs with an RJ-45 jack, would that work. I realize I still neeed to set it up, but that should work i think. We use windows XP pro edition. The NAS will only be for a few games and everything we already have hidden on the network. They do not use routers at our school, it is all wired through ethernet jacks. I was just planning on using a router so only one classroom or maybe two could get the signal.

You are probably using Active Directory to manage your user accounts with Win2k3. Its possible you also you novel netwar for management but thats just a side thing.

For your NAS you first need to find out if they are using DHCP or Static IP address. More then likely they are DHCP because they probally uses PXE to boot system (basically its a remote OS image so the hard drive dose not really store anything). If its DHCP you should be able to plug it in because the NAS default config should be for DHCP. The only issue is when you connect it in if your school has security policy that is correctly developed they should notice the IP address on the network. At my company we run a DHCP server and software that will alert us when a device comes online that is not already known.

Now that said its very possible they dont have security that way, and since its DHCP they will only see it as another device coming online (only way to tell is from MAC Address that is different). So you should be ok with DHCP running. Their is however a issue with this because if you ever power down the device or the network gose down theirs a chance you will lose that IP address since DHCP only holds on to for so long before releasing it to another device again. So you got to keep it up or run the risk of having to reconfigure it.

Once you get it connected however you need to find out what the IP address is of the system which can be a pain depending on how the NAS configures it self, the documentation will explain how to get it.

On a side note: I just have to say this but you are doing this at your own risk. I take no responsibility's for what happens to your device or network once you do this.

The reason I say that is because technically this can be consider network intrusion which can get you in trouble. But worse case they will just take the device and suspend your account. No criminal stuff most of the time.

Also your school dose us routers. Those ethernet jacks are packed own to a patch panel which go into a switch. From the switch it goes into a router or connections to a server that performs DHCP and other services. On most networks you need a router and in schools you definitely do. If you can ask your Admin to show you the server room their pretty cool.

This post has been edited by lockdown: 2 Apr, 2008 - 10:52 AM

Well we (the comp club at school) have decided against getting it, but thank you for all of the help lockdown, you really do deserve that expert badge. Hope to continue seeing you around the forums and have a good day.

No problem. I am always looking to help out just as others help me on the forum.