Hi all, 1st off sorry if this has been asked before or its just a stupid question but is it possible to use Wan 2 on a 2820n as a standard Lan port and if so how do I do it. I don't want to run a separate router or switch just to give one more device network access. Cheers.

I'm fairly certain you cannot do this. It would have to be a specific option, and there is no such thing that I can see.

Thanks for the reply jedi98, was hoping I was going blind (actually not but ya get the idea) or at least I didn't 'get' some of the options. The 2820 is the most configurable router I've had so far, also the most incredibly stable, but I was desperately trying to avoid having to engage another router between the 2820 and 2 servers, which seems to decimate performance and add to power consumption. May just add a wifi card to the new server and use it as backup.

In the vain hope that jedi98 is somehow unknowingly mistaken does anyone know of a way to enable wan as lan or confirm it as a technical impossibility.

A 100MB 4 or 5 port ethernet switch should have no effect on speed (unless you are using 4 machines talking to each other flat out all the time), is cheap and uses very little power. Then you would have 7 or 8 100Mbs network ports. Wireless lan on the other hand will totally mangle up the performance & reliability of anything you put on the end of it.

If you particularly need multiple 100Mbs paths between more than 2 lan ports at one time then us a switch with a gigabit port connected to the gigabit lan port on the 2820, but that would cost more.

And yes there is of course always the chance I have missed something in the config, there is a lot of it!

I'll try it with a Checkpoint safe@office 200 series. Have tried with a Belkin N1 router and performance was absolutely appalling. Would love to use the gigabit port on the 2820n but when I try that it refuses to recognize whatever is attached to it apart from a PS3 with automatic ethernet settings. Anyone know why that might me?

Edit: Sorry I need to edit and clarify my post. When an item such an Acer h340 WHS or popcorn hour a110 is connected to the gigabit port I experience extreme lag on streaming video startup and huge stuttering at every moment throughout the video. Totally unusable. Thinking in my own mind its an issue with packet handling/size. For reference the Acer NAS Lan adapter is a Marvell Yukon 88E8071 PCI-E Gigabit

On a separate note trying now to hang a 500gb 2.5" HDD off the usb port to permit permanent access to itunes library if the NAS is off and a Mac mini is on. Unfortunately its not being recognized. Any specific requirements for drive formatting etc before it can be recognized? Edit: Formatted with FAT32, mounted now, all good.

Thanks in advance.