Network Menu

The 5200's networking setup is a bit odd and, once again, fraught with half-done features. There is a very basic NAT router with DHCP server that is disabled by default. You enable it via the WAN menu's IP Sharing Mode control (Figure 15), where you also can enable Jumbo frame sizes of 4000, 8000, 12000 and 16000 bytes.

Figure 15: WAN configuration screen

Once you enable IP Sharing Mode, however, don't go looking for any of the usual router features such as port forwarding or filtering because they don't exist. All the LAN menu (Figure 16) provides are Jumbo frame, IP address and DHCP server controls. But I discovered, and Thecus confirmed, that Jumbo frames are supported only on the WAN port and that they will be removing the Jumbo Frame control from the LAN screen in a future firmware update.

Figure 16: LAN configuration screen

Controls for the 5200's many services are actually spread out over the Services, AFP, NFS, FTP and Nsync Target screens. Starting with the Services screen, the WebDisk (HTTP) and Secure WebDisk (HTTPS) services are both enabled by default, but web-based file access is for registered users only—no public access. The SMB/CIFS service is enabled by default, but UPnP is disabled.

The AFP screen holds enable / disable (default) and Zone setting controls, while the NFS screen just has enable / disable (default), as does the Nsync Target (enabled by default). The FTP controls allow enable / disable (default) and setting FTP encoding, but no control of anonymous FTP—which appears to be enabled. I could find no ability to disable FTP access for individual users or groups, which would be give me pause to enable it.

If I had plugged in a 3Com 3CRUSB10075, Zyxel G220USB or PCI GW-US54mini USB wireless adapter before booting the 5200, a WLAN option would have appeared to allow configuration. A check of the User Manual info revealed that only WEP encryption is supported, however.

Tags: NAS, RAID, Thecus,

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