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Hello,
I'm trying to figure out if my USB HDD connected to WL-500gP is visible to users of my provider's LAN. I have "Enable Download Share?" set to off, still I'm able to access \\WL500G.PREMIUM\part0 using \\192.168.X.Y IP set by provider. Does it mean others in provider's LAN can access it as well or no?
Usually 192.168.x.y is a private address and is not routed in the Internet anyway, same thing with 10.0.x.y - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_networkQuote:
Originally Posted by Synchro
In general: if it is a lan, then it's a private address not routed in the internet, therefore almost safe. Just your router gets a wan ip from your provider, which is never private. Your router change the 192.168.x.y address with the wan ip - even when you have 10 Pc's in your private network, nobody outside your lan can see it, because your complete lan looks from wan side like one device with one ip address and this is your router. What does it mean? Well, when somebody is trying to hack you, he is always trying to hack the router (your wan ip), but never one of your pc's. Only packets from inside (your pc's) can leave your lan through wan by changing the ip-address and only requested content (websites) will be received from your router and after changing the wan to lan ip forwarded to your pc.
But you should read something to understand, why you need a firewall aso.
Thanks,
in reality situation is a little bit more complex - I'm connecting to internet via my provider's LAN, so my 'external' IP is say 192.168.37.90. Will other people from the lan be able to contact my HDD via this IP?
Well, when using a private ip-address like 192.168.67.x at wan side and your network has for instance 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.254 then it depends just to the subnet mask which is mostly in your lan 255.255.255.0 - it means (in simple words) that just the last number is used in your lan.
Hence the subnet 192.168.67.x outside (wan) is a different subnet, therefore nobody can see anything inside your lan, as long as you don't change the subnetmask to 255.255.0.0 and have not installed a dmz (demilitarized zone) and/or port forwarded from wan to lan.
Just ensure, that your lan subnetmask is 255.255.255.0 and of course, that your lan's ip is different.