Anyone gotten "Back to my Mac" (or Airport Extreme File Sharing) to work...ever?

[scootermaster]

I'd like to share some files across the internet, either from a drive hung off my Airport Extreme or from my home Mac (presumably via "Back to my Mac").

From my brief tinkering, it doesn't seem like this is ever going to work. All of the support docs I see complain about how "double-NATing" will screw things up, and they don't really offer a solution to how you're supposed to fix it, other than "fix your local router".

Given that the places where this sort of file sharing might be useful (an airport, an enterprise office, a hotel room, a coffee shop, etc.) aren't the sort of places where you can go tinker with the local router, that leaves you pretty much dead in the water.

Just wondering if anyone's actually gotten this to work, and if so, how?


Thanks!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The double NAT they're complaining about is more than likely all happening in your house.

Please describe your ISP/Modem/Router/Airport arrangement. Pictures are nice.

A screenshot from the airport config utility showing your AP's external and internal IPs would also be useful. (Just the first part is adequate - 192.[blank] or 76.[blank] is enough info to go on.)

 

[stlcardinals]

What type and size of files are you trying to share? Tried Dropbox?

 

[scootermaster]

The double NAT they're complaining about is more than likely all happening in your house.

Please describe your ISP/Modem/Router/Airport arrangement. Pictures are nice.

A screenshot from the airport config utility showing your AP's external and internal IPs would also be useful. (Just the first part is adequate - 192.[blank] or 76.[blank] is enough info to go on.)

Okay, here goes (thanks for responding!):

I have Time Warner cable, with a normal cable modem (no integrated router). It's connected to a 3rd Generation AEBS.

So here is the setup screen from airport utility (weirdly: I have "set up over WAN" unchecked, but all of these screen caps are from accessing Airport Utility at work, so your guess is as good as mine as to what's going on here)


Here's the Internet page:

The network page:

Network options [NAT, etc.]


Disks page (One REALLY weird thing: I read someplace that either SMB or AFP or something doesn't like spaces in its volumes. So I plugged the thumb drive that's in the AEBS into my mac and renamed it from NO NAME to TESTDRIVE. When I plug it in to a computer, that's how the volume is mounted. But no amount of unplugging, resetting, changing configurations, hardware reset, etc., has gotten the volume name to change on the AEBS. I haven't tried the rebootiest of all reboots -- i.e. whatever's more than holding the reset button for 5 seconds -- but it's still a bizarre error. The drive mounts fine when I'm at home, and mounts as NO NAME, even though that's not at all what it's called anymore. Obviously doesn't mount across the internet, otherwise we wouldn't be here).

And lastly, here's my internet page "across" the internet. Not that it matters much I imagine, but I'm not NATed here, although I do have a reserved IP assigned via DHCP.

So...thoughts?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well, no double-NAT there. SMB shares should be no-spaces if possible.

If you can get to the router config from the WAN, but not the file shares, there's really probably just something wrong with the thumb drive.

"NO NAME" is the default name for FAT-formatted USB drives. But the Apple docs on Back To My Mac note that the drive should be formatted as HFS+ Journaled.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4907

If you want to use an AirPort Extreme or AirPort Time Capsule to access files on an external hard drive, you need a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted USB hard drive. When you use it with Back to My Mac, your hard drive will appear as the base station under Shared in the Finder sidebar.

So you could try reformatting the thumb drive as HFS+ Journaled with Disk Utility. (The volume name would probably stick then, too.)

 

[scootermaster]

Well, no double-NAT there. SMB shares should be no-spaces if possible.

If you can get to the router config from the WAN, but not the file shares, there's really probably just something wrong with the thumb drive.

"NO NAME" is the default name for FAT-formatted USB drives. But the Apple docs on Back To My Mac note that the drive should be formatted as HFS+ Journaled.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4907



So you could try reformatting the thumb drive as HFS+ Journaled with Disk Utility. (The volume name would probably stick then, too.)

I can't believe that did it! I swear I saw something about the drives needing to be FAT partitioned for access over SMB or something.

At any rate, I took a different drive, formatted it HFS+ Journaled and everything seems to work! Went down the street to a Starbucks and could stream the files I was looking for.

Still some kinks to work out, but so far so good. THANKS SO MUCH!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Glad that worked!

 

[JEDIYoda]

They don`t call him dave_the_nerd for nothing...