In short, yes. It sounds like you are using a 192.168.XXX.XXX IP behind your router, they need to use your cable modem's IP, you can check it at: http://whatismyip.com/ That IP will route them to your house (cable modem) and that will get them to your router. You can also use that IP and test it yourself from your house. Now's the trick, you need to logon to your router, kind of like you do on your DNS-323, usually at 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.15.1 (check your book that came with your router). Once in there, you need to find a setting that has a place that has FTP or Port 21, you should see a box to put the last number of your DNS-323's IP in there. This will tell the router to forward all incoming FTP/Port 21 requests to the DNS-323. I have a LinkSys router and this is real easy under the "Applications
& Gaming" tab you'll see "UPnP Forwarding", there the first line says FTP Port 21 and a place to enter the last number of the DNS-323 IP and and Enable Checkbox.
This should all be fine an dandy, but you are probably using Auto DHCP, so when you loose power our shut off some hardware, your DNS-323's IP may draw a new IP from your router (usually on a 3-7 day lease, thus you can see that your router will now be looking for an IP that does not exist or that is now a PC. For an example, go to a DOS prompt (Start Button, Run, type "cmd or command" in the open block, then type "ipconfig/all" and enter, you will see at the bottom your lease info your PC has on it's current IP. Auto DHCP is great for PC's that come and go, but main hardware like a DNS-323, you really don't want to have to logon the the router and update the IP above we spoke about. So you want to assign your DNS-323 a static number, I do the same with a network printer. I tell my router to start Auto DHCP above 100, I assign my printers just below that with Static IP's 90-99, for my DNS-323 I kept it easy and have it on IP 21 (don't confuse it with port 21), I just do that to make it easy to remember.
If you are not up to speed on the Static and DHCP stuff, it will still work, by telling your router to forward to it's IP; just when it stops working, check the DNS-323'a Ip and update it in the router.
On another note, that IP for you house that you looked up is a real ugly number and it may also change, just like your modem, especially when there is a power outage in your area. So for $6-10 a year you can get a domain name that will always be the same (i.e. pepsi.com or what ever your name is, ect.), you can use this name to get people routered to your cable modem much the same way you set your cable modem up to forward to your router. I use godaddy.com, all I do is use http://whatismyip.com/ to get my IP number, just enter that number into godaddy's screen and now people can get to your DNS-323 by using ftp://pepsi.com vs. somthing like ftp://24.198.52.105. You also get 100 email alias forwarding accounts and 1 main 50M account, so you can be bob@pepsi.com vs. bob1213ss@hotmail.com, but you can still use you hotmail account to check your mail. There's also a few companies like dyndns.com that have utilities (some built in the routers) that send your house IP to them automatically and update it in the settings. Most residential services will not issue static IP's, only to comercial companies, and it cost a lot extra. So, you can get it done with a non-static, just more work above like your DNS on Auto DHCP. My house IP (cable modem), usually only change ever 2-3 years, so not a big deal; usually when the entire area losses power for several hours/days, so not a big deal.
Also use your settings in you DNS to create user logons and assigning read/write access to specific folders for each user. I hope I didn't get to far off track, but try it, it's really easy.
I'm also not a fan of mapping drives, this is messy and has not much purpose. Go into your DNS-323's settings under the Device/Settings tab and enter the workgroup your PC's are in (most are under "WorkGroup") and give it a simple name like "DNS-323", after saving and rebooting, you can now access your DNS-323 on any pc in the workgroup by simply entering "\\dns-323\ or dns-323" in the browser line or a shortcut on your desktop. The only pit fall is user rights with this, but you can assign them with the FTP option and just use you domain name from any PC in the house. The possibilites are endless, really a great piece of hardware they made. I was leary to buy it at first, because of the brandname. This is the first item I ever bought from them that worked right out of the box without any special drivers or software. I have never installed any of their software, only updated the firmware to 1.03. Great job D-Link! I be real happy if it had a defrag option...
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Topic: FTP software...? (Read 8740 times)