Start renting your free disk space with STORJ SHARE

This guide will walk you through setting up the basic STORJ SHARE client on Windows. This is the quickest and easiest way to get started using the 5 steps below.

1. Configure NTP
2. Configure NAT and Port Forwarding
3. Set up a wallet
4. Install STORJ SHARE GUI & configure nodes
5. Start, monitor and view statistics

1. Configure NTP

Storj Share requires time synchronization between the Storj bridge & your nodes. You can use third party tools, but the easiest way is to simply change the server Windows is using to synchronize internet time.

STORJ recommends using pool.ntp.org to sync your time

If you are running Windows 7+ you can interact directly with the Windows time service.

• Choose your time server. pool.ntp.org has default time servers but also regional and country specific
  • Default - 0.pool.ntp.org
  • Region - 0.north-america.pool.ntp.org (available regions: europe, north-america, oceania or asia)
  • Country - 0.ch.pool.ntp.org
• Each pool.ntp.org option has multiple servers designated by the starting number - 0, 1, 2, etc.
• Open a command prompt as administrator (Start -> Run -> CMD -> Right Click -> Run as Administrator)
• Run the following command substituting the time server(s) you choose
  w32tm /config /syncfromflags:manual /manualpeerlist:"0.north-america.pool.ntp.org 1.north-america.pool.ntp.org 2.north-america.pool.ntp.org 3.north-america.pool.ntp.org"
  

• Alternatively you can change your internet time server by entering control panel Control Panel\Clock, Language, and Region\Date and Time
  

• Click Change settings…
  

• Update the server again to your choice of pool.ntp.org server, ensure Synchronize with and Internet time server is checked and click Update now.
• Finally, click OK

2. Configure NAT and Port Forwarding

Storj share requires your nodes to be accessible by their bridge. You can choose “punch out” which will allow the STORJ SHARE client to reach outbound to the bridge using UPnP, however this option is unreliable as some routers will close this connection after a period of time. Your preferred option is to configure your router / firewall to allow inbound connections.

Your preferred option will work best if you can assign a static IP to your node PC

• Find your gateway router address by opening a command prompt (Start -> Run -> CMD -> Right Click -> Run as Administrator)

• Run the command ipconfig and look for the Default Gateway (typically 192.168.1.1)
  

• This next step is specific to your internet provider and internet gateway but typically you can open a browser and navigate to http://192.168.1.1

• Likely you will need to log in, most times the user / password are on a sticker attached to your router or you can Google for the defaults specific to your router

• Once in, you are looking for a menu named Port Forwarding
  

• For each node you plan to share you will need a specific port and rule configured

  • External host depends on your router but will be either blank or * or 0.0.0.0
  • Internal host is your node PC IP address. You can get this from the previous command prompt ipconfig (In my case it is 192.168.1.4)
  • External Port and Internal Port should match and can be whatever your choose. Suggestion picking something above 1024 and below 65535 which is not already in use on your PC. Something like 42000 would be a good choice

• In my case I selected 29295 and added the rule
  

Once configured you can test by first getting your public IP by using Google and checking your port by using a site like yougetsignal

Copy your public IP and enter both the IP and port on yougetsignal and click Check. You should see the port is open.

3. Set up an ERC20 token wallet such as MyEtherWallet

Keeping this guide focused on STORJ setup, go to https://www.myetherwallet.com/

4. Install STORJ SHARE GUI & share nodes

• Download the GUI from their Github or storj.io/share.html

• Launch the installer and click through next

• Now it's time to start configuration, click on Start Setup
  

• Add your wallet address which was created in step 3
  

• Click on Choose Files

• In the dialog windows which comes up select a particular drive or folder that you want to share, which can be almost anything:

  • Locally attached drive
  • Network share
  • Mapped network drive
  • External USB drive
  • Storage Area Network or Network Attached Storage

• Click on Select Location
  

• Choose the amount of storage you want to share from the overall available storage

• Make sure to select the appropriate unit of measure (MB, GB, TB)

• Click Next
  

• Enter the Port Number from step 2 which you configured NAT port forwarding

• Check the Reachable box (This will ensure inbound connection from the bridge)

• Click Next
  

• Click Finish
  

• Finally you are sharing some storage!

• The Overview window shows important details about your share

  • NodeID – Unique identified for each share
  • Status – On / Off based on your share availability
  • Location – The specific location you are sharing from your PC
  • Uptime – How long your node has been available
  • Restarts – How many times your node has restarted due to error
  • Peers – Should range from 100 – 200
  • Bridges – Shows status back to bridge
  • Allocs – a counter which will increase as files are presented to your server. Actual files received will be in parentheses. It is normal see your Allocs increasing but no storage being added as many factors go into you winning storage.
  • Shared – Amount of storage actual shared from your disk. This will likely be less than your total offered
  • Delta – Your time offset compared to the bridge. This should start high and gradually decrease to less than -100ms if you configured NTP correctly in step 1
  • Port – Ideally this says (TCP) and is green. That means your node is fully accessible
    • If your port is Red it means you are not accessible
    • If it says TUNNEL it means you are using punch outbound communication and may not be reliable
    • If it is black (like the screenshot) it means local loopback is not working meaning the client can't talk to itself on the local network, this is fine

5. Monitor & view statistics

Now that you are up and running you probably want to start getting some storage. It will take time, and can take up to a week to start actually receiving file shards. This is due to a couple factors:

• Delta - This will start high and gradually decrease quickly over time
• Response Time - This will start likely above 9000ms but gradually over time will reduce. Anything below 9000ms is considered acceptable
• Reputation - This indirectly affects your storage allocation and will go up or down based on the times your node accepts an Alloc (+1 rep) or rejects (-1 rep) or is offline

The easiest way is to use https://storjstat.com

You can add your NodeID and it will show details. Best way to win storage is to have your nodes always on and over time you will eventually get some storage

In order to troubleshoot you can use http://ssdynamite.com

You can upload your log files and run through an analyzer which will tell you the number of times you accepted or rejected an Alloc, your response time and timeout rate. All things to monitor to ensure healthy nodes

At this point you just wait.... If your nodes are healthy, they will gradually over time gain reputation and improve performance thus eventually leading to some storage being allocated to your nodes. Payouts are in $STORJ coin and occur monthly to your wallet.

For more crypto news and information visit http://www.seems-legit.com/