5. FTP Server

Since OvisLink says they didn't have room to implement a SAMBA server to provide complete Networked Storage features, they opted instead to include a decent FTP server. To check this feature out, I plugged in the 160 GB One-Touch USB 2.0 drive that Maxtor loaned me for my review of Linksys' NSLU2 Networked Storage Adapter and a 32 MB Flash drive I had lying around.

Figure 5: FTP volume information

Both drives were recognized without muss or fuss and Figure 5 shows how they appeared when I clicked on the Show USB Storage button on the FTP Server Configuration page. I liked that the server recognized both drives, even though the OneTouch was formatted for ext3 and the USB Flash drive FAT formatted.

Figure 6: FTP Server configuration

Figure 6 shows you get a pretty good set of controls including port, active / passive mode (including setting the passive mode data transfer port range) and maximum number of clients to name a few. Following good security practice, the FTP server is disabled by default and even when enabled defaults to being available to LAN clients only.

Figure 7: FTP User Account setup

Figure 7 shows the user account settings, which include the ability to limit maximum upload and download speed and limit user access to specific IP addresses or ranges. I set up both Anonymous and normal accounts and logged in using an FTP client and IE and Mozilla browsers without problems. I also successfully made file transfers in both directions using both my FTP client and drag-and-drop with IE.

I would have liked to see a simple disable for FTP user accounts, though you can accomplish (almost) the same thing by changing a user's password to a different, strong one.