I have FreeNAS on an old server computer in my room and its sole purpose is to allow me and my friends to upload, download, and share large files with each other (because discord only supports 8mb and google drive only has 15gb for free). I used WebDAV because it is accessible inside of file explorer and appears as a mapped network drive which is exactly what I wanted, however, Windows has a built-in 50mb limit for downloading files from a WebDAV server, it can only support one user and password, and when me and my friends go into the windows registry to remove to 50mb limit, our computers freeze and crash etc...
I was looking into using SMB because (obviously) it is able to be accessed through file explorer, it easily supports users and groups and permissions within FreeNAS, however, it seems to be designed for internal use because the internet says to NOT PORTFORWARD IT EVEEERRR OR YOU WILL BE HACKED, but my fileserver is intended for remote access, so my question is:
I was looking into using SMB because (obviously) it is able to be accessed through file explorer, it easily supports users and groups and permissions within FreeNAS, however, it seems to be designed for internal use because the internet says to NOT PORTFORWARD IT EVEEERRR OR YOU WILL BE HACKED, but my fileserver is intended for remote access, so my question is:
- Can SMB be accessed securely and remotely
- Would that require a VPN or SSL connection?
- How would one go about setting that up?
- Would it still be easily accessible as a mapped network drive if a VPN or SSL is required?