Honestly, that thing is basically just a tiny little computer running iOS—it’s shaped like a chunky USB stick, if that makes sense. I just plug it directly into the HDMI port on my TV, and since it has two USB ports, I use one for power and the other to hook up a powered USB hub. That way, I can jam in my hard drives, a USB Ethernet adapter to keep everything wired up, and even a mouse while I’m testing things out. Once it actually starts behaving itself—and hey, let’s not get ahead of ourselves with that optimism...—I’ll probably just yank it out of the TV and tuck it away somewhere out of sight, mostly because my TV doesn't have an endless supply of HDMI ports. The cool part is that I can scale it up with extra drives if I need to, and I might eventually try to set it up so I can access everything remotely from outside the house, assuming I don't settle for just keeping it on the local network once I finally get it working.
So, just in case anyone else is running into this—straight from the manufacturer's specs—you can't actually access the USB drive via an external IP address. I ended up digging through my junk drawer and found this ancient Android stick, thinking I could repurpose it as a makeshift file server. Honestly, I was pretty stoked at first because it turns out even newer Samba share apps actually run on Android 4.2.2, which felt like a small miracle. But, the bad news... I still haven't been able to successfully connect to it from my phone or my laptop. I mean, I can see the device on the network, but it just won't let me log in when I try using my phone.
Look, the reason I set that specific port up was just because I configured my FTP server to run on it—nothing fancy. And honestly? It’s working perfectly fine when I'm just accessing it from within my local network.
Man, oh man... now I have to go through the whole process again just to snap a screenshot and show you guys what happens when I try putting 0.0.0.0 in for the external address. It actually went through this time! It threw some weird error before, but apparently, it’s accepting zeros now. Honestly, I have no clue what I did differently this time around. Just pure luck, I guess.
Anyway, there’s the Port Forwarding config. If anything looks wonky to you guys, just let me know and I'll fix it easy.
I’ve been messing around with an Android stick lately—good news is it works fine once I plug my drive and mouse dongle into a USB hub and then into the stick. I still need to dig around for an Ethernet adapter to plug in and really test the stability. Bad news? This thing is running Android 4.2.2, so I’m pretty much stuck with whatever old apps actually work. 'Andsmb' is supposed to be compatible with this version of Android, but the whole thing just crashes the second I tap anything. Found another one that seems legit, but the free version is way too stripped down, so I’ll probably end up having to hunt for a third option or just bite the bullet and buy the Pro version.
Yeah, I'm stuck being limited to just one host right now, which—let's be honest—is a total security nightmare. I'm gonna mess around a bit more to see if I can make port forwarding work, but man, I'm running out of ideas here. All I've found online is that it worked for one guy using the DMZ setting, and then another guy mentioned that sometimes you have to leave the external address as 0.0.0.0 in the port forwarding settings instead of typing in the actual IP... but every time I try that, the config just refuses to apply and throws an error in my face.
I was digging through some old threads on another forum and saw someone else run into this exact same headache—it didn't actually start working until they shoved everything into the DMZ. I didn't even touch any of my other settings, just did that one thing and suddenly, boom, it worked.
While I'm sitting here waiting on AT&T to actually get back to me with some intel from the manufacturer, I decided to mess around a bit—you know how it is—by setting up an FTP server on my laptop and trying to forward the ports. It actually works, though there's a catch: it won't budge unless I shove my laptop's IP address straight into the DMZ in the router settings. That's what got me thinking, so I tried putting its internal address in the DMZ instead, but nope—the router immediately threw a fit and refused. It’s pretty clear the hardware just doesn't support what I'm trying to do, but honestly, let the manufacturer weigh in on that themselves.
On a side note, I stumbled onto something pretty weird while I was Googling stuff. I found this entire thread of ours copied verbatim over on a site like htc.com: https://www.htc.com/showthread.php?t=1313633 I have no idea what kind of scheme this is. Are they just scraping entire forums to farm ad clicks or something?
wiredcanyon94 said:It’s not the ISP. You can prove that to yourself by trying to access something inside your own network from an outside connection—assuming you actually set up your port forwarding correctly, of course. If that works, but what you're trying to do still fails, then the provider is definitely messing with something on their side.
Yeah, I was planning on running that test today, but honestly, the day just kind of got away from me. It’s getting close, but I really want to be 100% sure before I jump to conclusions. If it turns out to be what I think it is, I'm moving straight to Plan B with that Android stick—unfortunately, it's stuck on Android 4.something, so I'm guessing X is going to make things... interesting.😁
Kenneth Cruz67 said:Are you absolutely sure you and customer support are even on the same page here? I mean, did you happen to mention to them that this isn't some fancy NAS setup, but just a simple USB drive without any kind of dedicated network card? There isn't really anything to forward when the router's IP and the USB's IP are essentially one and the same.
Okay, I suppose that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but wouldn't port forwarding be the actual solution to that? Like, wouldn't you just open a port on the external IP and then have everything hitting that port forwarded to an internal IP?
There isn't really anything to redirect if the drive is plugged directly into the router itself, because there isn't a separate internal IP to point to.
So, does that mean things work differently on your router? Is the drive actually exposed directly via the external IP?
Yes, exactly! So, when I type in my external IP, I get directed straight to my router's login page, assuming I'm browsing the web through that same router. However, if I try to access it from a completely different network, it actually sends me right to my server where Apache is running, since I've gone ahead and forwarded port 80. And if I try to connect via FTP using the external IP, it prompts me for a username and password and then opens up my USB drive just like that.
Additionally, if this functionality is just hardcoded into the router and it doesn't support port forwarding to itself, I guess I might need to pick up some extra hardware.
You could probably just grab a WD network drive, maybe something like a My Cloud, for roughly $100 to $500
Yeah, we're definitely talking past each other—I think. Like, he totally understood what I was asking, but then he goes, "Man, nobody has ever asked me anything like this before," and since this isn't exactly a standard service AT&T provides, they aren't exactly experts on it.
Kenneth Cruz67 said:Are you absolutely sure you and customer support are even on the same page here? I mean, did you happen to mention to them that this isn't some fancy NAS setup, but just a simple USB drive without any kind of dedicated network card? There isn't really anything to forward when the router's IP and the USB's IP are essentially one and the same.
Okay, I suppose that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but wouldn't port forwarding be the actual solution to that? Like, wouldn't you just open a port on the external IP and then have everything hitting that port forwarded to an internal IP?
There isn't really anything to redirect if the drive is plugged directly into the router itself, because there isn't a separate internal IP to point to.
So, does that mean things work differently on your router? Is the drive actually exposed directly via the external IP?
Yes, exactly! So, when I type in my external IP, I get directed straight to my router's login page, assuming I'm browsing the web through that same router. However, if I try to access it from a completely different network, it actually sends me right to my server where Apache is running, since I've gone ahead and forwarded port 80. And if I try to connect via FTP using the external IP, it prompts me for a username and password and then opens up my USB drive just like that.
Additionally, if this functionality is just hardcoded into the router and it doesn't support port forwarding to itself, I guess I might need to pick up some extra hardware.
You could probably just grab a WD network drive, maybe something like a My Cloud, for roughly $100 to $500
So at this point, it's either the router doesn't allow IP access to Samba, or if it's set up to stay off the public address, then the whole thing is just a paperweight...
Kenneth Cruz67 said:Are you absolutely sure you and customer support are even on the same page here? I mean, did you happen to mention to them that this isn't some fancy NAS setup, but just a simple USB drive without any kind of dedicated network card? There isn't really anything to forward when the router's IP and the USB's IP are essentially one and the same.
Okay, I suppose that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but wouldn't port forwarding be the actual solution to that? Like, wouldn't you just open a port on the external IP and then have everything hitting that port forwarded to an internal IP?
There isn't really anything to redirect if the drive is plugged directly into the router itself, because there isn't a separate internal IP to point to.
So, does that mean things work differently on your router? Is the drive actually exposed directly via the external IP?
Yes, exactly! So, when I type in my external IP, I get directed straight to my router's login page, assuming I'm browsing the web through that same router. However, if I try to access it from a completely different network, it actually sends me right to my server where Apache is running, since I've gone ahead and forwarded port 80. And if I try to connect via FTP using the external IP, it prompts me for a username and password and then opens up my USB drive just like that.
Additionally, if this functionality is just hardcoded into the router and it doesn't support port forwarding to itself, I guess I might need to pick up some extra hardware.
You could probably just grab a WD network drive, maybe something like a My Cloud, for roughly $100 to $500
Look, it's not that deep—I've got three USB drives at home, an Android stick, and an Android box sitting there. Honestly, this whole thing is just me messing around for the hell of it; I don't actually *need* any of this. There is zero chance I'm spending real money on it. It's more of a "let's see if I can actually pull this off" kind of hobby rather than a necessity. If this fails, I'll probably just try to burn something onto an old Android stick and route it through there, and if that's a bust, I'll move on to the newer box. Either way, the tinkering never ends. I'm thinking about shooting an email to AT&T and the manufacturer just to get some clarity on this mess.
Edit: Ubee doesn't provide end-user support; they'll just tell you to call your service provider.
So, customer support is basically telling me it’s totally fine that no ports are showing up—they claim everything will magically appear once I set up port forwarding. But here’s the thing... I already ran some tests with forwarding turned off. I'm gonna dive back into testing that a bit later.
Kenneth Cruz67 said:Well, that explains it; it looks like that USB interface isn't actually connected to the WAN side. I was browsing the Tom's Hardware forums earlier and saw that the older models didn't have this capability, so I suppose it seems this one doesn't either.
Okay, so that explains why the drive isn't accessible without port forwarding, but shouldn't port forwarding actually fix that? Like, you open a port on the external IP and just pass everything hitting it through to the internal IP? Does that mean your router handles things differently? Like, is the drive somehow exposed directly on the external IP?
Also, if this stuff is just hardcoded into the router and it won't let me use port forwarding on itself, then I might as well just go buy an extra device to handle it instead.
So, I just ran an online port scanner and it’s telling me there isn't a single port open on my external IP. Honestly, I feel like someone is pulling my leg here. I’ve already disabled the FW on my router, and my ISP—Comcast—is insisting they have everything wide open on their end... I'm kind of at a loss, you know? Not sure where else to dig. I think I'm gonna give them another call just to have them double-check everything, because, frankly, I'm stumped.
I'm getting absolutely nothing on my external IP from the router—just "site can't be reached" over and over again. I've already gone in and disabled the firewall on the router itself, and I've been going back and forth with Comcast, and they're swearing up and down that they don't have any FW enabled on their end... apparently, all the ports are wide open as far as they're concerned.
So, I went ahead and shut down all the port forwarding on my router, but honestly, nothing seems to be working. I’ve tried hitting up my FTP—both standard and FTPS—as well as trying to reach my Samba shares via the public IP, but it's just a total dead end. Even when I tried testing with an anonymous login, it wouldn't budge... the ports aren't showing up as open at all. The weird thing is, if I try to ping the router, it actually responds, but that’s about the extent of the life I'm getting from it.
So, here’s the real kicker—which one actually holds up better? My current setup handles big drives just fine, though I won't lie, the speed is pretty mediocre at best... but hey, it gives me both Samba and FTP options. But honestly, the dealbreaker for me is remote access. It’s definitely not some "plug and play" miracle. Seems like you win some, you lose some, right? Are you saying you can only get in from outside by hitting the FTP port on your router's external IP? Like, you didn't even have to mess around with port forwarding or anything?
Yeah, look—the drive is plugged via USB directly into the router, which is already set up with Samba, FTP, and a media server to handle sharing everything over the network. Setting up local shares like that is usually just a matter of clicking a few buttons in the settings. I honestly don't get why anyone would call that setup "stupid." To me, spending extra cash on a dedicated NAS or even a Raspberry pi just to do what I can already do with the gear sitting right in front of me seems like the real waste—plus, I don't even want to deal with the extra power draw from adding another host to my setup.
@wiredcanyon94, yeah, plugging the drive into a PC and trying to access it remotely is a solid way to test things out. Though, I guess that still doesn't technically prove whether the drive attached to the router will work or not—maybe it just needs a specific tweak in the config.
@Kenneth Cruz67, are you actually trying to use your phone over the local network?
The only thing going on this drive is my music library, and its sole purpose is streaming to my phone while I'm out and about. I'm still genuinely trying to wrap my head around why people think this approach is bad—what am I actually losing here? What kind of "danger" am I even facing by doing it this way?
So a1 says the upload speed sits somewhere between 14 and 20 Mbps—which, honestly, is more than enough for what I’m trying to pull off here.
The real headache is that I can't pin down which specific IP address the router is using to host this Samba share. The gateway is sitting at 192.168.0.1, but then I see .10 popping up on the network with port 445 wide open. When I browse the shared drive, it just shows up by its hostname, and I haven't been able to figure out how to confirm that the name actually maps back to that specific IP. I really need that info so I can get my port forwarding set up right. Up until now, every time I try to point an internal IP through the port forwarding settings, the port stays closed on my public address... so maybe it isn't the IP itself, but I'm kind of flying blind here. I know plenty of people forward ports all the time for online gaming, so it's definitely doable, but I'm wondering if it matters that I'm trying to forward directly to the router instead of a separate device on the network? It feels like a bit of a stretch, though—not sure if that's actually the culprit.
I’m always down for some solid, well-reasoned advice.
I’m still a little lost on what you’re getting at with NAT—how exactly is one of its functions supposed to be secure user authentication? NAT is all about address translation, right? What does that have to do with verifying who someone is? And that stuff you sent over regarding NAT tunneling... honestly, it's a pretty wild concept, but is anyone actually using that out in the real world? Could you dive a bit deeper into the authentication headaches people run into with Samba? I did a quick little deep dive on Google, and besides the occasional glitch where a user can't log in or group permissions act wonky, I didn't see much else. Is that what you're talking about? Or if there's something more complex going on, do you have a link or something where I could actually sit down and learn the ropes?
I've got fiber, yeah. Well, technically it runs to the building and then it's just coax all the way to my router.
Jack Cook7 said:Well, you got your practical advice. === Don't expose your file server to the open internet ===.
A static IP costs you money—you gotta pay your ISP for it (could be anything from a single address up to a full C class if you're feeling really loaded). If you don't want to shell out for a static one, you need dynamic DNS because your provider is gonna swap your router's public IP roughly once a week. There are plenty of reasons they do that, and all of them are valid.
The IBM file protocol (aka SMB, Simple message Block) was built for tiny local networks, like maybe 10 PCs sitting in a room. Once Microsoft took over, the thing ballooned into this massive beast that’s practically useless on the internet.
If you really want your files online, just use services like Dropbox or Google Drive. What people always overlook is that when you dump your files onto a public service like that, you're basically handing your content over to the service provider, both in practice and legally.
Again, don't take this the wrong way, but I've always been pretty skeptical of "appeal to authority" arguments—especially when they come from random folks on the internet. I prefer actual logic, and I think I can wrap my head around what's being said here if we stick to the facts.
I had no idea my ISP swaps IPs every week—I'll have to double-check that. If Verizon actually operates that way, it's definitely a downside for standard plans, but a big plus for anyone using a DDNS solution.
You didn't really explain *why* Samba is unusable or specifically in what context it fails. I'm sure there's truth to that for certain setups, but I'm struggling to see how it applies to my specific use case. If you could shed some light on that, I'd really appreciate it.
I use public storage services, but they aren't practical for what I'm trying to do—the free tiers offer way too little space to be worth it for my needs. And as for someone stealing stuff from my Dropbox? Honestly, if they're stealing things I've already "borrowed" myself, it's not exactly a crisis.