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[HughMunBeane]

the wireless router is in an inaccessible part of the house. Can I use the laptop as the access point and plug the dns-323 into the ethernet port and use it from there?

[ivan]

What exactly do you want to do with the NAS, have it available to other computers on a network, nave it available from outside your internal network or just use it connected to your laptop?

Next thing, why not just put the NAS with the router?  After all it is not as if you need to look at it every 5 minutes, but then you may have some other reason for having it nearby.

Have you considered using a cheap wireless AP to connect the NAS to the wireless network?

[fordem]

First - you don't need a router or an access point to have a network or use a NAS - the purpose of the router is to allow your network to connect to another network, usually the internet, and the purpose of a wireless access point is to allow a wired network to be extended wirelessly.

Second - there's no reason why the NAS should not be physically located in an inaccessible location, as long as you have a network connection to it, you can access the files on it.

To answer your question - yes - a laptop can be used as a router, provided that it has multiple network interfaces - a router is nothing more than a special purpose computer with multiple network interfaces - having said that, whilst it can be done, it doesn't mean it should be done, and since you have to ask, you're going to need to call in someone to do it for you, buying a router would probably be cheaper.

[HughMunBeane]

Inaccessible in this case means I'm in a shared house and someone else controls the router & its ports.
My laptop connects wirelessly, but I'd like to use the NAS to store music & movies, not necessarily to share.

[fordem]

What you need is not a NAS, but an external hard drive - perhaps USB attached - NAS is Network Attached Storage - it's reason for existence is sharing storage across a network.

Having said all of that - plug a network cable into the laptop, plug the other end into the NAS, install and run the Setup Wizard and then either set static ip addresses on the NAS and the laptop or set a static address on the NAS and enable the DHCP server - please note you MUST use a different network range to that used on the WiFi.

[HughMunBeane]

Thankyou very much, fordem.