Connect NAS to your Computer Directly

My Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 72z comes with USB 2.0. Its maximum throughput is 480Mbit/s but the effective is about 35 MB/s or 280 Mbit/s. I want to improve file transfer speed between my computer with external hard disk by replacing USB 2.0 with Gigabit Ethernet which provides higher bandwidth.

If I connect my QNAP TS-112 which has a gigabit ethernet to TL-WR842ND which supports wireless 802.11n with maximum 300MBit/s and wired fast ethernet with maximum 100Mbit/s, the bottleneck will limit the transfer speed to 100Mbit/s. There are two solutions to improve: get a faster wireless router or connect TS-112 to ThinkCentre Edge 72z directly.

Because my ThinkCentre Edge 72z connect to TL-WR842ND via wireless 802.11n, I have an empty gigabit ethernet. Therefore, I choose to connect TS-112 with gigabit ethernet directly. TS-112 may access internet through the wireless connection on ThinkCentre Edge 72z when it is working.But nobody may see it, even we share the same wireless router.

Share your Wired Network to other Computers

First, you need to share network to other computers.

If you are using Windows, search for ICS Windows, there are many information and step-by-step tutorial about Internet Connection Sharing (aka ICS) available.

On my OpenSuSE 13.1 with GNOME, I need to install [dnsmasq-dhcp] first. Then use [Network Connections], [Add] a new [Hardware/Ethernet] with your desktop MAC address in [Device MAC address] in [Ethernet] tab and [Shared to other computers] in [Method] in [IPv4 Settings] tab.

Connect your NAS and Look for IP

You may use Qfinder from QNAP to search for your NAS in Windows, MacOSX and Ubuntu 12.04/13.10. Unfortunately, this utility doesn’t work on my OpenSuSE 13.1.

For those who fail to run Qfinder,check the messages in system log. For OpenSuSE 13.1, you may use [YaST]→[Miscellaneous]→[System Log] to view Linux system messages.

Then looking for the MAC address of your NAS.The MAC address of my TS-112 is [00:08:9b:d5:c1:bc]. I got the following message and identified the IP it got is [10.42.0.12]:

2013-12-21T13:27:17.989481+08:00 Edge72z dnsmasq-dhcp[2245]: DHCPOFFER(eth0) 10.42.0.12 00:08:9b:d5:c1:bc

Now, I may use the IP address to login to the admin interface and manage as usual.

More thoughts

Of course, the story is not the end. I test the transfer speed with Network File System (aka NFS), Server Message Block with Samba (software), File Transfer Protocol, and iSCSI. It should be available tomorrow.

Reference

1. Lenovo: ThinkCentre Edge 72z
2. Wiki: USB
3. Wiki: Gigabit Ethernet
4. QNAP: TS-112
5. TL-WR842ND
6. Wiki: IEEE 802.11n-2009
7. Wiki: Fast Ethernet
8. Wiki: Wireless Router
9. Microsoft: Windows: Using ICS (Internet Connection Sharing)
10. OpenSuSE: Portal: 13.1
11. GNOME
12. Simon Kelly: DNSMASQ
13. Jeremy Visser: Simple Internet connection sharing with NetworkManager
14. OpenSuSE: Chapter 25. Using NetworkManager
15. QNAP: Qfinder
16. Wiki: MAC address
17. Wiki: YaST
18. Wiki: Network File System
19. Wiki: Samba (software)
20. Wiki: Server Message Block
21. Wiki: File Transfer Protocol
22. Wiki: iSCSI