Home network with a NAS

[CombatMedic]

I am planning to upgrade my home network and I would like to have some things clarified. This is how I imagined the network: The isp router will be connected to a nas, my pc, a wireless router (this will be used as an access point) and a switch. The acccess point will be an asus ac66u. My questions are: Will my pc be able to access the nas? Will devices connected to the access point be able to access the nas? And will devices connected to the switch be able to access the nas?

 

[Uwillparish]

as long as the nas is farther up in the chain (as in ISP>Nas>Switch>Access) then yes you can access the NAS

[Oshino Shinobu]

Yes, all of them should be able to connect, as they are on the same LAN. 

 

Connecting the NAS to the router is essentially like connecting to a switch, as most routers have switching and Access Point functionality built in. 

 

One thing you may want to check is the speed of the LAN ports on the router. If they are only 100BASE-T, you'd be better off connecting the NAS to the switch (assuming it's Gigabit) so you can get better local transfer speeds. 

[Thingo]

Yes, as mentioned before. If you only have one router in your setup, there will be no problem

[LAwLz]

Is this what it will look like?

 

 

If it is then the answer is yes to all your questions, but it will be a pain in the ass if your ISP router is bridged.

That's because if your ISP router is bridged, everything will get a public IP which will change from time to time. With a NAS what you really want is a private network and static IPs.

 

And like Shinobu said, you want gigabit ports. 100Mbps ports are horribly slow for local file transfers. If you are using RAID then chances are even 1Gbps will bottleneck you (but it's not worth going to 10Gbps for home use).

[CombatMedic]

Thank you for the graph. That is what I had in mind. The only difference being that, assuming the dashed line is a wireless signal, the wifi is turned off on the isp router so all of it's connections are wired.

[CombatMedic]

How do I know if my router if bridged and what problems would it cause?

[CombatMedic]

How do I know if my router if bridged and what problems would it cause?

[LAwLz]

Thank you for the graph. That is what I had in mind. The only difference being that, assuming the dashed line is a wireless signal, the wifi is turned off on the isp router so all of it's connections are wired.

The dashed lines represent cross-over cables. The straight line is a straight cable. Don't worry about it. It's just for illustrative purposes.

 

 

 

How do I know if my router if bridged and what problems would it cause?

Plug your computer into your ISP router and then check the IP you get.

Do you have an IP that starts with:

192.168.X.X

172.16.X.X

10.X.X.X

?

 

If you got any of those then you will be fine.

If you want to check your IP address then just open up cmd and type in "ipconfig" without the "".

 

When you got multiple home routers you usually put all but one in "bridge mode". What it means is that the router acts more like a switch. In this case, if you had the ISP router in bridge mode then each one of your devices plugged into it would get their own public IP, which could cause issues (like them not being able to find each other).

So what you want is your ISP router to be in the normal mode (non-bridge) and then your Asus router should be in access point mode (not wireless router mode). If that's done then everything should work just fine.

[CombatMedic]

Thank you everyone especially LAwLz for the replies. You've helped me a lot in my networking plans.