Hello Tek Syndicate! I have a small dilemma. I created a samba server so I could have a remote drive to store my school files. Please don't tell me how unsecure smb is. I already know just stick with me. Anyways i went to school to go test it and I'm pretty sure they're blocking incoming 445 and 139 connections. I didn't think this was a big deal, so I just decided to change the port number on the samba server and then I found out windows explorer can't connect to other samba servers that are not using the default 445 and 139 ports -.- Can someone please tell me how to get around this issue.
Have the smb server only listen on the LAN and create a VPN so that you can still access it outside your local network.
Definitely use a VPN to connect to it. Opening up SMB to the internet can't be safe :P
Have a look at openVPN, you can use whatever port you want. If your school has a really strict firewall you can use TCP port 443 which is the same as HTTPS, so they won't be blocking that. But try it out with UDP first as it'll give you better performance.
SFTP might also be a good option
usually also ISPs block smb. It's not a protocol that should go over the internet at all, ever so it's not likely to work (ever) without the vpn/ssl option that everyone is suggesting above.
Alright. Thanks Guys. I appreciate the feedback. Its just our classes are really short, and I was hoping I would be able to just auto-connect to my samba server every time. I also liked that the server acted just like a regular hdd, so It was more convenient than using sftp.