Then there are the nice to haves that are tacked on - including remote access, printer sharing and media streaming. These tend to be vendor "checklist item" features that most users never take advantage of, but they may come in handy in some cases.
Print serving is a nice feature -- if you happen to want to place your printer next to the share storage device. Some devices also support the Universal Plug and Play (UPNP) and Digital Living Network Alliance media server specifications, which means that they can stream multimedia content to your home entertainment system by way of a digital media adapter that you buy separately. I did not test this feature, however.
Setting up remote file transfer protocol (FTP) access is a different can of worms entirely. Most products don't document the ins and outs of configuring FTP very well -- nor do they warn of the security issues. An FTP server presents a security risk and a firewall configuration hassle that's best left to network experts. The NetCenter, for example, requires that you open ports 20 and 21 to the outside world. Then you'll need to configure up a rule in your firewall to map the IP address of your cable or DSL modem to the dynamic IP address given to the network storage device. A dynamic IP address assignment can change over time, and if it does you'll have to map that again.
"FTP is still an advanced user feature and requires some firewall configuration," admits Brian Verenkoff, with Buffalo Technologies' technical support. "Due to security flaws in FTP, it's best left for advanced users anyhow." Buffalo plans to add features that will make setup and security for FTP access easier, he adds.
FTP servers in a corporate environment reside in a demilitarized done, or DMZ, that is "firewalled" off from the rest of the internal network where your important data lies. Turning on FTP on a home NAS device allows access not only to your internal network, but if something goes wrong it could potentially put at risk all of the data on the shared storage device, not just the folder with FTP access.