This article talks about how to access QNAP nas remotely from outside network. Including open https port on qnap and setup port forwording on router.

TABLE OF CONTENT


What you need for remote access?

  1. You should need a public ipv4 address.
  2. You should know basic ideas about Port Forwarding.

How to get a public ipv4 address?

We know that ipv4 address consists of 4294967296 (232) addresses, among them about 228 million addresses are reserved. All the public addresses has been already exhausted back in 2019.

Thanks to the NAT technology, we can barely support up to now with IPV4. Many ISPs may allocate private ipv4 address to your home router under some local area (may be your community) to save precious ipv4 resources.

Search for “my ip” in google and you will get your real public ip. Check your router ip on your router configuration page. If your real public ip match your router ip. Congratulations! You have your own public ip. If not, contact your ISP and ask for a public ip.

How to setup on QNAP?

open https

Open “Control Panel”->“General Settings”, check “Enable security connection(HTTPS)”

setup DDNS

Open “myQNAPcloud” app and go to “My DDNS” tab. QNAP will give you a free domain name under [domain_name_prefix].myqnapcloud.com. You should first define your own name to replace domain_name_prefix here and toggle “Enable My DDNS”.

DDNS service will check ip change automatically and update the association between the ip and domain name if needed.

setup SSL certificate

Open “myQNAPcloud” app and go to “SSL certificate” tab. Request a free SSL certification from Let’s Encrypt and remember to check “automatic renewal” which will automatically renew the certificate.

2-step verification

It’s recommend to open 2-step verification on your QNAP to provide more security. Check more on this link.

How to setup Port forwarding?

When you access “https://[domain_name_prefix].myqnapcloud.com” from outside network, it’s typically accessing service port 443 - the default https port - on your router, which is of course not available. You should forward this request to the internal QNAP nas service port 443.

The port forwarding configuration may varies for different routers. Let’s take TP-Link for example:

  1. Login to the TP-Link router
  2. Click on “Forwarding” and then “Virtual Servers”
  3. Click “Add New”
  4. Enter “Service Port” which I suggest not 443 but another valid memorable port number for security concerns
  5. Enter “Internal Port” which is default 443, remember to check that port number on QNAP “Control Panel”->“General Settings”
  6. Enter QNAP internal private ip address
  7. Click “Save”
Now, your can access your QNAP nas remotely using the following url: https://[domain_name_prefix].myqnapcloud.com:service_port

What’s next?

Because you have exposed your service on the public network, everyone can access the service without any problem.

Even if you have altered the default 443 port number and add 2-step verification on QNAP, there is still a chance that your username, password and 2-step verification were hacked by hackers. Or some vulnerabilities of the QTS system may lead to data leak or even worse.

If there is any more secure way to remote access QNAP nas? Here comes in VPN and we will talk about it in this post.