01 The Problem

A 12-person aerospace consulting firm in El Segundo was using Dropbox Business for file sharing — costing $1,800/year — and struggled with slow sync speeds when uploading large CAD files (2–10 GB each). Remote workers also had no secure way to access internal resources when working from home.

02 Our Approach

We specified and configured a Synology DS923+ NAS with 40TB of RAID-protected storage. File sync was migrated off Dropbox. We also configured Synology's built-in VPN server (OpenVPN) for remote employees, with certificate-based authentication — no passwords, no subscription. Each employee got a unique VPN client config. The NAS is behind a firewall with GeoIP blocking and intrusion prevention enabled.

03 The Result

Large file transfers now happen at LAN speeds (~1 Gbps on-site). Remote workers VPN in and access files as if they're in the office. Ongoing cost: $0/month vs. $1,800/year for Dropbox. The system has run for 8+ months without incident.