SmallNetBuilder

Setup & Feature Tour

When I turned to install the software for the box, I realized I had a problem. The included software was delivered on a mini-CD and my system has a slot-loading drive that only accepts standard-sized CDs. But after reviewing the documentation, it was clear that the installation software could be skipped and the box could be configured via a web browser.

So I used a broadcast ping: ping 192.168.1.255 to find the box. This turned up a new machine and I connected to it with my web browser. After logging in with the default username and password, I started exploring the configuration menus. The first operation I needed to perform was formatting the drive I had installed. Figure 2 shows the Formatting menu. As you can see, the disk can be formatted in either FAT32 or XFS mode.

Figure 2: Formatting the Disk

FAT32 is often used as a least-common-denominator filesystem. It's not fast, but most any computer can use it. XFS on the other hand is a bit of a curious option for a general-purpose device like this. Silicon Graphics originally developed XFS specifically for efficient handling of very large multimedia files. These days, XFS is mostly found in Linux systems. If you're planning on using the USB feature of the device for connecting to a Windows or Mac OS computer, you'll need to use FAT32 format.

After my drive was formatted, I explored the administration options. Figure 3 shows the Network Settings menu where standard network parameters can be defined.

Figure 3: Network Setup

To share my newly installed drive on the network, I first created a user account. Figure 4 shows the user-creation menu where a new user can be defined and a default user share created.

Figure 4: User Creation

Figure 5 shows the "Share" menu where the share for my newly created user appears.

Figure 5: Share Setup

Note that there is no menu for defining a share that is not tied to a particular user account. The system predefined two other network shares that couldn't be accessed from any of the configuration menus: An "admin" share I was never able to mount, and a "public" share that was open with read/write privileges for everyone. I was able to use the public and the user-specific share normally from both my Windows and my Macintosh systems.