Accessing ReadyNAS remotely with WebDAV

The ReadyNAS makes a great file sharing device when you’re on a local network, but what about when you’re at work, a business trip, or on vacation, and you need access to your data remotely? Have no fear. There’s something call WebDAV, or “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning”, basically an extension to HTTP that allows you to access and store your files remotely over HTTP or HTTPS. The user interface is similar to your typical file explorer and you can drag and drop files for easy management of your data.

Before we begin, let’s look at what you need to do to setup WebDAV access. We’ll need to do three things:

1. Configure the ReadyNAS for WebDAV access.
2. Setup your router for remote access to the WebDAV share on the ReadyNAS.
3. Configure Windows (or whatever client OS you are using) to allow access to the ReadyNAS over WebDAV.

Let’s start.

Setting up the ReadyNAS for WebDAV

1. If you are using RAIDiator 4.01, you will need to install an add-on to get WebDAV to work. Download the add-on here, and install it from the System/Update/Local page in Frontview. After rebooting for the add-on installation, you will need to reboot a 2nd time. Please note that this add-on is not required if you are using RAIDiator 3.01 or 4.00.

2. From the Frontview Share Listing page, select the share that you want to enable WebDAV service and click on the HTTP/S access icon. To see a bigger view of the screenshot, click on the image below.

3. Select “Default Access” as “Read/write”, enable the WebDAV option at the bottom, and click Apply. You can fine-tune the user/group/host access restrictions once you’ve verify everything is functioning OK.

Setting up your router for remote access

You will need to punch a hole in your router firewall to allow access to the ReadyNAS WebDAV-enabled share. Keep in mind that doing so will also give you access to Frontview since we will be opening up the same port. For our example, we will stick to an encrypted-only connection so that all access to the ReadyNAS — login, password, and data — will be encrypted. This is important as you do not want to compromise the data on your ReadyNAS in any way.

There are many manufacturers and hundreds of routers on the market, and even though two routers may come from the same company, there’s no guarantee that the user interface is the same for making the same change. We won’t go over every router configuration here as it’s beyond the scope of this article, but we’ll give you a link where you can find out how to do this easily.

First, let’s find out what your external IP address is. Every home will have an IP address assigned by your ISP. You can find out what this IP is by visiting http://whatsmyip.org/. Write this IP address down as you’ll need this later.

Our goal with the router is to forward all HTTPS access to this IP address to the ReadyNAS. HTTPS, or numeric port 443, is what is used for encrypted access for WebDAV access.

To forward port 443 on your router to the ReadyNAS, follow the instructions on our FAQ on how to do this. The link in the FAQ will direct you to a site where you can find out how you can forward the HTTPS (port 443) on your router model. If you have done this correctly, you should be able to access FrontView with:

https://external_ip_address/admin

Make sure to replace the external_ip_address with the external IP address found above.

Setting up Windows to access ReadyNAS WebDAV share

The following instructions are setup instructions for Windows XP and provides are general idea of how you would set up WebDAV client. If you are running Vista, OS X, or Linux, you can “google” to get appropriate instructions on setting up WebDAV in those environments.

1. Click “My Network Places” from the Windows Start menu.

2. Click “Add a network place”, and you’ll see the wizard as follows:

3. Click Next and select the “Choose Another Network Location” option.

4. Click Next, and specify the path to your WebDAV share. The path is as follows:

https://external_ip_address/sharename

For example, if external IP address you found above is 12.34.56.78 and the share name you’ve set up WebDAV access is “webfiles”, then you would enter:

5. Click Next. You’ll get a warning about SSL certificate. Accept it, and you will get a prompt to enter your user name and password to access the share. Enter the same user name and login that you use for Windows to access your share over File Explorer here and click OK.  If you are using Share level security on your ReadyNAS, the username is the same as the share name. In the example above, the username would be “webfiles” and then the password.

6. Enter the name of this network place, or accept the auto-generated name. In this case, we’ll accept “webfiles on 12.34.56.78″. This is the short-cut name that will show up in the “My Network Places”.

7. The last step is to confirm the setup and click Finish to bring up the WebDAV File Explorer.

8. You will see the file explorer as follows with the content of the webfiles share displayed in the window. At this point, you can drag & drop files to and from this window.

That’s it. Now you’ve got remote file sharing to your ReadyNAS from anywhere on the Internet!

FAQ

1. My ISP keeps changing my IP address. How can I get WebDAV to track the changes?

You’ll need to set up a Dynamic DNS hostname that will be updated to reflect your changing IP address. Most newer routers have this option where you can setup a free or paid DDNS account with one of the DDNS providers. The router does the job of “pinging” the DDNS server so that any changes in the IP address will be reflected in the DNS table. If you decide to do this, instead of using the external IP address, you would specify the DDNS hostname in the WebDAV setup on your client.

2. How can I get rid of the SSL certificate warning whenever I access my WebDAV share?

Go to the Services/Standard File Protocols page, locate where the HTTPS service option is, specify the IP address or hostname that you will be using to access this share, and regenerate the certificate.

3. How come WebDAV is not working on Vista?

There appears to be a bug with Vista with Web Folders.  However, Microsoft has released a patch to fix this.  See here.

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