App Central
We now slowly move towards the App center and that's where all the fun begins. The days when a NAS unit was merely a file-server are long gone, ever since a year or two ago applications can be installed onto your NAS. Think diverse here:
The NAS can be connected to the web, open the router ports and you are good to go. This unit has a small factory of PHP based apps included alongside an http deamon (apache). Also MySQL and services like SSH can be activated.
With the click of a button you can install handy tools to help you manage MySQL. A word of advice though, know what you are doing in relation to security. Secure your directories when fooling around with CMS software and MySQL (MariaDB = MySQL compatible).
Also interesting are cloud functionality options, you can create your own cloud but also bind Google Drive, MS OneDrive etc.
For the downloaders among you, there is plenty to choose from. This NAS can download from usenet or Torrent, unpack and insert the final file into a directory. Seriously, it is easy and convenient once you know how to deal with these handy little software packages. Download and installation of these packages is a bit slow from the EU though, I think Thecus has their servers located in Taiwan or China, well somewhere Asian. Not a big dealio though.
Quick test - Usenet Download performance
So let's perform a quick download test over usenet. Performance wise, when using this Celeron quad-core based NAS and 4GB RAM for usenet the downloads are reasonable. On a 300 Mbit download connection (=37.5 MB/sec) we download at 10 to 14 MB/sec - unrarring/par'in remains very fast. I do have to state though that SABNZB isn't the fastest usenet download on the block. We would LOVE to see the Thecus team make a proper NZBGET port... *hint*hint *
