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[MountainMan]

I have a slightly unique streaming video scenario and I could use some advice.

I have my DNS-323 setup at my main house as a file and AV server.  I'm gradually copying all my DVDs and CDs onto this server.  Audio and video streaming work great to my PS3 and other computers in the house on my local network.

I have a vacation cabin in the mountains where I was FINALLY able to get broadband this week.  Its fairly far from town and I was getting desperate using a modem and having my networking dreams crushed.  At last I can move data freely between my two networks . . . or can I?

I really want to setup my XBOX360 or maybe buy a second PS3 and set it up at the cabin so I can stream movies from my AV server at the main house to the PS3 at the cabin.

The bandwidths should work okay.  The main house has 1 mbps uplink and the cabin has 1.5 mbps down.  I can sustain 75%+ of these numbers during data transfers.

But how do I get the NAS to stream video over the external internet?  Not via FTP, I already tried that.  It wants to copy the entire file and then start playing it.

Is there some video server that I can install on the NAS that will do what I want?

Or if I install an HTTP webserver on the NAS can it somehow stream video?

Or maybe a better approach would be to somehow bridge the two networks such that they are permanently connected by a VPN tunnel and appear to be part of the same subnet?  Is that possible?  Maybe that would actually be the best setup since it would let me do all kinds of neat things as if the computers were all co-located and without security concerns.  And if the NAS and cabin PS3 appear to be on the same subnet then video streaming would probably work without issues using the standard UPnP server.

Ideas are appreciated.  Thanks!

[Icey]

Dear MountainMan,

I would recommend the VPN solution, the easiest (and safe) solution which doesn't require allot of changes in your equipment. All you have to do is to setup one router als VPN Server and the other one as client. A few minutes later your devices should be reachable at both your locations. UPNP, FTP, SMB or multiplayer gaming... everything should be possible, and the required equipment doesn't have to be very expensive.

[MountainMan]

Dear MountainMan,

I would recommend the VPN solution, the easiest (and safe) solution which doesn't require allot of changes in your equipment. All you have to do is to setup one router als VPN Server and the other one as client. A few minutes later your devices should be reachable at both your locations. UPNP, FTP, SMB or multiplayer gaming... everything should be possible, and the required equipment doesn't have to be very expensive.

Thanks Icey.  That would be really cool if it works.  I've only used software VPN clients to log into a hardware VPN box and never setup a permanent link between two VPN hardware boxes.  Will they actually end up on the same subnet with the VPN routers passing traffic back and forth between devices on the two ends as if they are local to each other?

Do you setup one of the two as the DHCP server and it works for devices on both sides of the VPN tunnel?  Or do they both act as DHCP server for their own sides of the tunnel and you have them use non-overlapping ranges?

Will the VPN server and client reestablish the link after any drops or power failures?  This is pretty important since I won't be in both places to perform initialization.

Any suggestions of make / model?

It seems like in this VPN bridged configuration all the internet protocols should work exactly the same way they do within a subnet.  Is NAT the reason many protocols don't work properly between devices in different home networks?  For example, if the DNS-323 were directly attached to a static global IP address instead of being behind a NAT, could another computer attached to a global IP address use the UPnP server to stream video?  It just the NAT that's messing up this kind of application or is there something else I'm not understanding?

Thanks!