SmallNetBuilder

Setting Up

A common problem I have when adding a new device to my network is finding it once its plugged into my LAN. Since IP addresses are typically dynamically assigned, it's not often clear where the device is without looking through the logs of my DHCP server. A handy trick I've been using to address this problem is a broadcast ping. Although devices are not required to respond (as per RFC 1122 section 3.2.2.6), I usually get replies from network devices (such as the NASes and multimedia networked adapters I test) that are non-Windows based. Here's the command I used for my LAN, which uses the 192.168.1.X subnet:

ping 192.168.1.255

Using this little trick, I noticed a new address in my DHCP range. I pointed my web browser to this address and was greeted with a SimpleTech administration screen. (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Basic Administration Screen
(click on image to enlarge)

Interestingly, the presented login prompt had a message telling me the default user name and password. This was nice in a couple of respects. First, it kept me from having to dig through the documentation for these values, and second, it made it quite obvious that these values should be immediately changed from the defaults!

Of course, the drawback is that some people could use the box as-is, without ever using the web administration screen. The supplied setup software maps a persistent network drive, so if that were all you needed, you might not ever go into the web-based administration screen and it would remain unsecured.

Once I logged in, I had the option of configuring the box through a "Wizard" or through an "Advanced" menu. For starters, I selected the "Wizard" menu. The wizard route took me through a standard setup for naming the box and for changing the administration user name and password.

The next setup screen in the process was designed to allow mapping the SimpleShare to Windows drive letters. But I ran into a hiccup when I found that this screen was written specifically for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Since Firefox does not support Active X controls, this wizard page was not able to retrieve a list of unassigned drive letters and instead displayed a malformed page. Note that this wizard step is specific to Windows-based systems anyway, so perhaps shouldn't be included in the setup wizard.

I Ignored the malformed web page, clicked the Next button and moved on. The final screen indicated that configuration was complete and gave me a choice of Done or Advanced Setup. The Done button was nonfunctional (another Internet Explorer specific feature to shut down the browser) so I went into the Advanced Setup area.

The Advanced Setup screen gave much more control over the SimpleShare's functions. By using these screens, I was able to specify an NTP server for keeping the clock synchronized, change the IP address to static, change the Windows work group, setup users with associated read/write privileges, reboot the box , etc.

One of the first items I configured was logging. The Simpleshare has the ability to send e-mail alerts for important actions and to remotely log detailed information to an external syslog daemon such as found under OSX or Linux. I set up e-mail alerts and set up remote logging to a Linux box on my network. Since I find it very valuable to have detailed logging while trying out the various features, I enabled the logging of as much information as I could.

When I finally got around to exploring the supplied software that came with the box, I found that its main purpose was to ease the process of locating the device on the LAN for configuration. Basically, the supplied software finds the box using its own method and then spawns Internet Explorer to configure it using the standard configuration web pages.

But even though Mac OS X is listed as a supported configuration, the supplied software runs only on Windows. I was also surprised that backup software was not included, because other products of this type typically include some sort of automated backup capability. I did find Simple Tech offers its StorageSync Standard Edition as a free download, but this was not mentioned in the SimpleShare's documentation and is also a Windows-only solution.