Introduction

Hello everyone, I’m back.

Recently, I got a QNAP QMiroPlus-201W machine, which is a very interesting NAS.

It is a combination of a router and NAS.

Its NAS system is powered by the J4125 processor, which is very suitable for tinkering.

I have also tinkered with it and installed the LEDE soft router, achieving many rich plugins.

Today, I will teach you in detail how to use QNAP NAS to install a soft router and use it as a bypass router.

This tutorial is also suitable for all QNAP NAS devices, as long as they support virtual machine functionality.

Preparation Work

1. The soft router I am installing this time is only used as a bypass router, so you need to have a main router.

After installation, you need to manually set the IP address and gateway for the clients using the soft router.

The disadvantage is that it’s a bit troublesome, but the advantage is that it does not affect the main network. Even if this soft router’s NAS is turned off, it will not affect the home network:

2. We log into the QNAP backend, click on the application market, and install the virtual machine workstation.

If your NAS does not support virtual machines, then you cannot continue:

3. We log into the Koolshare community, click on firmware, LEDE_X64_fw867, and the virtual machine disk writing tool.

Then download the second firmware ending with .vmdk:

4. After downloading, we place the LEDE soft router firmware in any folder on the NAS for easy retrieval later:

Start Installing the Soft Router

1. We open the QNAP virtual machine workstation, which looks like the following:

2. Then click import and select the image converter:

3. In the image converter, select the LEDE soft router firmware we just downloaded and export it to the same directory:

4. After exporting, we create a virtual machine.

In the virtual machine name field, enter openwrt, at this time, the operating system will automatically change to Linux.

Then click on the use existing image below, and select the firmware we just converted:

5. After setting, we need to adjust the virtual machine settings by changing the storage space interface to SATA:

6. The virtual machine is now set up, we click the virtual machine’s power button to start it:

7. After waiting a few seconds, we can click this screen to enter the virtual machine display interface:

8. Once we enter the virtual machine interface, press the Enter key a few times to confirm that the progress bar does not jump, then enter the code:

vi /etc/config/network

This code edits the configuration file of the soft router:

9. Then we move the keyboard cursor to find the position shown in the image below.

Press the i key on the keyboard to enter input mode, then modify the IP address.

Change the IP address here to your home network segment.

For example, if my main router’s IP address is 10.10.10.1, then I need to change it to 10.10.10.x; otherwise, it will not open later:

10. After modification, press the ESC key to exit input mode.

Then type :wq and press Enter, which means save and exit:

11. Next, we enter the following code:

reboot to restart the virtual machine:

12. After rebooting, we open a webpage and enter the IP address we set, for example: 10.10.10.252

We will then enter the login page of the soft router.

The login password is koolshare.

At this point, our soft router is installed.

Setting Up the Soft Router

1. We log into the LEDE soft router system.

Since we are using it in bypass mode, the efficiency is certainly not as good as a physical router, but it is sufficient for use, and it is okay for everyone to make do:

2. Next, we click on Network -> Interfaces, and edit the LAN port:

3. Next, it is important that we modify the IPv4 gateway to our main router’s address.

Then set the DNS to 114.114.114.114 and 223.5.5.5:

4. On the same interface, scroll down to the bottom and check the box to ignore the DHCP server on this interface.

Then save and apply:

5. After setting the LAN port, we click on Koolshare Center to update, and we can install various plugins.

The plugins are very rich, with 61 available, and it also supports offline installation of some plugins:

6. Here are some plugins I have installed for reference:

7. Finally, this soft router plugin cannot be used by devices in the home.

You need to set the IP address and gateway.

For example, with my PC, we modify the IP address in the network settings to set a static IP address.

Then change the default gateway to the soft router’s IP address.

In this way, my computer can use the soft router’s plugins:

8. Everything works perfectly:

9. If you want our NAS, or mobile phone, TV, tablet, etc., to enjoy the soft router’s plugin functions.

You can also use the same method to set a static IP address and gateway:

Conclusion

It’s time for the conclusion.

Recently, QNAP updated the QTS 5.0 system, and Synology updated to the 7.0 system.

Domestic brands have also added systems like Extreme Space, Lenovo, and Ugreen.

The current NAS environment is becoming richer, with much more playability than a few years ago.

Among the various NAS products I have used, only QNAP’s virtual machine has felt the most user-friendly.

The rest is DIY NAS.

Speaking of DIY NAS compared to this virtual machine soft router.

The biggest difference is that DIY has stronger performance and can use virtual soft routers as main routers.

Whereas the virtual machine soft router under our NAS is more suitable as a bypass router to avoid affecting the main network. It is highly not recommended to use QNAP NAS as the main router because the boot speed is relatively slow, and updates are frequent. Once the system is updated, it will affect the network, which is very inconvenient.

Therefore, you can use the method described in this article to operate without affecting the main network.

That’s all for this article. I wonder if everyone has learned it?

See you next time, goodbye!