Control Panel - Network & Virtual Switch

Network & Virtual Switch essentially provides you with a central location where you can create, configure, and manage network connections, which allows you to connect your devices to both local and remote networks. You can take a tour of the Network & Virtual Switch app by following this link.


There is a tutorial to show you what Virtual Switches can do for you. You should check it out.


You can combine all Ethernet ports (Port Trunking mode) to increase transfer speeds. However, you need a switch that is compatible with the IEEE 802.1AX-2008 standard (the successor to IEEE 802.3ad) to do so. Another important option is Jumbo Frames, a reference to Ethernet frames that are larger than 1500 bytes. Jumbo Frames is designed to boost networking throughput while reducing CPU utilization on large file transfers by allowing larger payloads per packet. But there is a catch as the Jumbo Frames setting only applies to Gigabit network environments and all connected clients must enable the option with exactly the same MTU value for a performance boost to occur.

Control Panel - Network Services

This is the Network Access menu.


You should enable the file service for Microsoft networking if you want the NAS to be a part of a Microsoft-compatible network. You can also set the NAS up as a domain controller.


There is an FTP service option in QTS. The Telnet / SSH menu will be of use to advanced users who need to access the NAS server's OS through the command prompt.


The network recycle bin works like the regular recycle bin in another OS. After enabling it, every deleted file or folder will be moved to the network recycle bin of the shared folder it belongs to, which would allow you to recover a file after accidentally deleting it. While a very useful option, you should be careful with it if you delete large files regularly as they may take up a significant amount of storage space. You can avoid such mishaps by carefully specifying for how many days (1-180) deleted files will be kept in your network recycle bin.

Applications

The control panel contains QNAP's Applications menu through which you can install and configure all available QNAP stations and applications. One of the most interesting stations is HybridDesk Station, a platform onto which various applications, along with other tools, can be installed to browse the web or playback NAS multimedia content, through a TV utilizing the HDMI interface. Strangely enough, Kodi and Netflix are missing, but we will show you how to install both of those apps later on in this review.