3. User Admin, Shares And Multimedia Features

This box has many features so I won't be able to cover them all in this review, but I'll go over some of the more interesting ones. First up is the capability to have individual user accounts with varying privileges. Figure 6 shows the menu that allows local users to be defined.

Figure 6: User setup screen

Users can be assigned to defined groups and then the network-shared folders can be restricted based on users and groups. Figure 7 shows the folder sharing setup screen.

Figure 7: Shared setup folder

Shares setup on this screen will be exported to the LAN using both Windows SMB and Apple AFP file sharing protocols.

Synology advertises the DS-106e as an "all-in-one" server with support for a number of capabilities oftentimes not found in a consumer-grade NAS. These features, found in the Network menu, include a UPnP multi-media server, a download station, a MySQL database server, a personal Web server with PHP support and an ftp server with bandwidth limiting options. Figure 8 shows the UPnP AV setup menu.

Figure 8: Multimedia setup

When this option is turned on, multimedia files stored in the pre-defined shares of photo, video and music will be served up to UPnP AV-enabled devices on your network. A quick test using a Buffalo LinkTheater and a D-Link DSM-520 showed the feature worked as advertised. Files I placed in the appropriate directories were made available for playing with my entertainment center.