Urza said:
Niles said:
It would most definitely have to be opened for outside access. Assuming its purely for file access, standard protocol would be FTP, with a default port of 21 (you should really change it for private use).
Port 80 can't be open by default, because where does it go? When you do port forwarding you need to direct incoming port traffic to a specific local IP, otherwise how does your router know which local PC is the server?
While that is true, generally you would have DDNS running on the router and pushing to the correct machine, if you're hosting on a consumer pipe.
DDNS only gives you a static IP, it effects what address you connect to, nothing else. Port forwarding opens a port for incoming access on the router. In his environment you can assume hes going to have at least 2 computers behind his router, his current desktop/laptop he uses, and now his new file server, minimum.
Now this presents 2 local IP address, usually by default they will be 10.0.0.* or 192.168.1.* or 192.168.0.*. Local IPs that are inaccessible from the internet. So, the Router responds to the internet IP (could be forwarded from your DDNS provider) on a specific port, now the router needs to know where to direct this traffic within the local network. This is what port forwarding does, and this is why it is not done by default already. You need to specify all incoming traffic on X port is directly to X local IP to X port.
For example:
Port 21
Protocols TCP/UDP
Destination IP: 192.168.1.50 (assume thats what your local fileserver is for example)
Destination Port: 21
So anything hitting your internet IP on port 21 will be sent to 192.168.1.50 on port 21.
No router has port forwarded setup by default, because they can't guess where this traffic should be directed, not to mention it would be a security hazard if this was a default option in the first place.
Back on Topic though,
Assuming you want local shares accessible from Windows, Linux, and pretty much any OS, and you want FTP access from the internet to your files, FreeNAS provides this out of the box, and it can be configured without even having a monitor on your file server. It is your ideal solution.