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My desired setup is: NAS has direct ethernet connection to PC PC connects to home network and internet wirelessly (i.e. wifi to router)

I want to be able to transfer files to/from the NAS as fast as possible due to the ethernet connection, but I also want wifi devices such as TVs etc, to be able to see the NAS. Essentially I suppose, I want the NAS to be able to tunnel through the wifi connection and be seen as a seperate device, whilst the PC accesses it via ethernet.

I've tried Windows ICS, which successfully provides internet to the NAS and the NAS is accessible to the PC, but not to the other devices on the network. I've tried bridging connections between ethernet and wifi, but this makes the NAS inaccessible.

If I plug the NAS into the router LAN socket, everything works precisely how I want - except transfer speeds to the NAS drop to 7mb/s.

I am not good at networking, can this be done? How can I configure the respective settings for the LAN adapter in Windows to do this?

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  • Unless you want to access the NAS's HTTP interface from machines other than the local PC, the simplest solution is make it a shared disc on the PC, which the rest of the network can then access. For TV access, you may also want to run a DLNA server on the local PC and make the media files on it available through this.
    – AFH
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 11:51
  • Thanks for your quick reply - unfortunately the problem is that I can't correctly ensure everything can see the NAS to begin with. I'll update the question to reflect this.
    – user1971339
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 11:57
  • They don't need to see the NAS: they need only see the PC to which it's attached - that's where the share would be. It would work just like an attached USB drive.
    – AFH
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 11:59
  • I understand what you mean now, however the NAS does a bunch of stuff like user account control and streaming that I don't want to offload onto the PC. If I plug the NAS into the router LAN socket, everything works precisely how I want - except transfer speeds to the NAS drop to 7mb/s.
    – user1971339
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 12:02
  • Assuming it's not practical to run an Ethernet cable to the router, I would plug the NAS into the router and use power-line networking to connect the PC's LAN port to another router LAN port instead of using WiFi: this should give up to 500Mb/s and you will see much the same transfer speeds as with a local connection. You would have to spend a little money, but in return the PC is isolated from all NAS traffic from other devices, which would otherwise have to go through it, reducing its performance and requiring it to be running at all times when other devices need to access the NAS.
    – AFH
    Commented Sep 28, 2015 at 12:27

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For devices to "see" the NAS via service discovery (browsing) protocols, they must be on the same multicast/broadcast domain (basically, the same bridged/switched, wired+wireless Ethernet LAN) as the NAS. However, APs (wireless routers) don't allow clients to bridge traffic on behalf of other clients. APs won't accept traffic from MAC addresses that haven't done an 802.11 authentication and association to the AP. If your PC is just bridging, your AP can't tell that the PC is trying to vouch for the traffic from the NAS.

To bridge on behalf of other clients, the device on both ends of the wireless link must do what's called WDS (Wireless Distribution System). It's easy to find APs and other embedded wireless bridge boxes that can do WDS mode, but this isn't something that's normally done on a Windows PC. Perhaps someone else will speak up with some obscure tool that can make this happen, but I doubt it. You could probably configured a Linux box (with a well-chosed wireless adapter chipset) to do this, but you're much less likely to find that kind of flexibility under Windows.

In order to hide the MAC address of the NAS from the AP, the PC would need to do NAT. But if the PC is doing NAT, the NAT will block the NAS from being seen via discovery/browsing protocols, which use link-limited multicast/broadcast, which doesn't go through NAT. You could set up port mapping (port forwarding) on the NAT code on the PC to allow devices to manually put in an IP address and connect to the NAT, but they wouldn't "see" it in their network browsing UI.

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  • Thanks @Spiff, that answer is very much in the spirit I was hoping for. So am I correct in thinking you're suggesting that if the PC does NAT, with port forwarding, other devices that know where to look will be able to find the NAS, and others won't?
    – user1971339
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 19:32

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