Share disks over WAN for Windows
Problem description:
I can't access my USB drives connected to the Airport Extreme over the WAN from Windows XP. However, it's working fine with my Mac.
My Configuration:
+ Airport Extreme firmware version 7.2
+ 3 USB drives connected to the Airport Extreme via the USB hub
Using the AirPort Utility, I have configured the followings.
+ On the Airport/Base Station tab, I have enabled "Allow configuration over Ethernet WAN port" and "Advertise configuration globally using Bonjour"
+ On the Disks/File Sharing tab, I have enabled "Enable file sharing" with accounts options (and I have created different user accounts). I also enabled "Share disks over Ethernet WAN port" and "Advertise disks globally using Bonjour"
+ On the Advanced/Bonjour tab, I have enabled "Use a wide-area hostname"
+ I also registered my dynamic IP address at home with DynDNS
My Observations:
+ At home (this means locally), I can access all the drives from all of my machines including, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac Mini, PowerBook.
+ Outside of home (this means over the (WAN), either at work or at my friend's house, I still can access all the drives from my PowerBook. However, I CANNOT access any of the drives from any Windows machines.
My Understanding:
+ On Mac, it uses AFP protocol for file sharing and this is working fine locally or over the WAN.
+ On PC, it uses CIFS protocol for file sharing and Airport Extreme seems to have issue with this over the WAN.
Help!!!
If anyone has found a working solution and has tried it yourself and you know it works, please post the solution with detail steps. Your help will be highly appriciated. I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who has this issue.
Thanks