Can you use a wireless dongle with Synology NAS?

Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central

Support already ended with DSM 6

Synology quietly ceased to update its wireless dongle support page, which led many to believe support would be ending. We had some readers reach out to complain the dongles they purchased for their NAS didn’t work as directed. We reached out to Synology and were told that it was, unfortunately, the case that wireless USB dongle support had ended.

This all occurred through the latter versions of DSM 6. With DSM 7, some still held out hope that some sort of support would be passed on to allow the use of these accessories.

No wireless dongle support in DSM 7.0

DSM 7 is one of our largest updates yet, and required a complete overhaul of many subsystems and software. As a result, many of the things that are able to work in DSM 6 won’t be able to transfer over to DSM 7. For these drivers to work within DSM 7.0, the third-party providers will need to rewrite and update the drivers for the individual products and must be tested for official compatibility and to ensure there are no security risks to Synology users.

Drive support can be patchy, even on an OS as popular as Windows, which led Synology to consider canning the feature to protect NAS enclosures. No one wants to be using an outdated driver that could have a security flaw. Synology decided to protect its customers and remove the functionality altogether in DSM 7.0.

In order to connect your best NAS for home to the outside world, you’re going to need some network cables. Luckily, Synology includes CAT5 cabling with each of its NAS enclosures.

Network cable:
Mediabridge CAT6 cable (50 feet)

Cables are the blood vessels of any network. This CAT6 50-foot solution from Mediabridge can handle speeds of up 10Gbps, which is more than what most Synology NAS and PCs can handle. This provides room to grow the network with faster network interfaces to allow for faster transfer speeds.

$13 at Amazon

Network switch:
TP-Link TL-SG108E

This is a great value switch with plenty of features. It has eight Gigabit ports (perfect for Synology NAS), network monitoring, loop prevention, cable diagnostics, QoS, and more. There’s also a limited lifetime warranty. This is a solid foundation for creating a smarter home network.

$27 at Amazon

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