How to solve slow or fast breathing LED in 10 minutes with direct ethernet connection and ICS, enable local access, copy data or isolate My Cloud Home from the internet

ICS = Internet Connection Sharing. One step configuration.

This is as easy as networking gets.


One of the most vexing problem for the home user of MCH (My Cloud Home) is the damnable slow or fast white LED breathing light. Slow breathing is associated with server or internet problem while Fast is usually an ethernet connection problem. The solution offer here is to use a direct ethernet cable connection between a computer (PC or Mac) to MCH. In the past, direct connection has been problematic because the MCH is incapable of a static or fixed IP address setting so a DHCP server such as the one in a router is nearly always required. The problem of troubleshooting is compounded by Home users who are generally unfamiliar with their own router set up or they don’t have direct access to the router or their ISP owned the router and has locked down the router to port and firewall changes.

The solution here is to bypass the router and instead use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) feature available to both Windows and MacOS users as it is built in. For a more detailed discussion of the settings, please refer to Windows ICS or MacOS ICS links.

Requirements:

  • working laptop/desktop with both WiFi and ethernet adapters, USB types okay. **
  • working WiFi internet is available at this location.
  • a working ethernet cable between computer and My Cloud Home

**The only requirement is actually that there are two network adapters of any type, one of which could connect to the internet.

1. Share WiFi from Your Mac over Ethernet

Or Win10 Internet WiFi adapter to ethernet

Go to Win10 control panel, right click WiFi network adapter icon, properties and choose Wi-Fi Sharing and choose the target (physical) ethernet adapter

Once ICS is working as it is enabled, one would see:

  • MCH white LED becomes solid and no longer flashing
  • My Cloud Home will end up at IP address as confirmed by cmd terminal
  • arp -a

192.168.137.2 is now the MCH IP and if one types
\\192.168.137.2
into the Windows File Explorer address bar, the My Cloud Home folders will show up.

At this point, if it is one’s objective to copy the download the files off of the MCH, go ahead and make a shortcut or quick access link in Windows and proceed to backup the MCH.

Win10 My Cloud Home ICS IP address


Because WiFi internet is being shared with the My Cloud Home at this point, it is now possible to authenticate with the Western Digital servers and to enable ‘local access’ which is recommended for MCH access without restriction from WD servers.

If a user enters the IP 192.168.137.2 into the Win10 browser, the MCH device-local will show


Finally, if one’s objective is to isolate the My Cloud Home from the internet, one would disable the WiFi to ethernet internet connection sharing above and instead install just a DHCP server without the internet sharing in the following configuration:

For those who are really concerned about their MCH and wish to isolate their MCH from the internet, this diagram is one way of doing it for little or no cost. You would replace the My Cloud shown with a My Cloud Home (MCH) of course but understand that the MCH does not have a static IP setting - therefore a DHCP server has to run on the PC or Mac, and that could be done as a service. Once the MCH received the IP assignment from the DHCP server, the ethernet adapter of the PC and the Mac will need to match on the same subnet in order for the switch to connect the devices. The ethernet is basically working without a router in this case but the Wifi router will be providing the internet only to the PC and Mac but not the MCH. It is self evident that each PC and each Mac required one ethernet and one WiFi adapter for this set up. An inexpensive USB3 ethernet or USB WiFi adapter would suffice if no built in adapter is available.

**The only requirement is actually that in each computer there are two network adapters of any type, one of which could connect to the internet. The two adapters of each computer will be on separate subnets, one of which has internet and the other doesn’t.

Tailscale works great by itself, but Tailscale is also able to work with ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) of Windows and enabling subnet routing and sharing of devices on the ICS subnet. Tailscale as a replacement for WD Discovery is described here in this subforum: NOT SUPPORTED June 2023 Local drive mounting via WD Discovery for My Cloud Home desktop ends **with Tailscale Fix DIY - #12 by NoPlex

Tailscale allows easy desktop and mobile sharing of MCH without the use of WD servers or WD apps.

In the ICS example above, one should disable ICS first before installing Tailscale then re-enable it again after Tailscale has been installed in Windows and authenticated. Then find the MCH address using arp -a as shown above and follow this below:

Here is the how-to-configure TailScale Subnet Router for Windows Machine

The Windows installer places a tailscale.exe command in %PATH%. You set Windows up as a subnet router using a cmd.exe shell with the same command as Linux:

tailscale up --advertise-routes=…

So, if the ICS assigned IP Range is 192.168.137.1,

you’d likely want to use the following on CMD:

tailscale up --advertise-routes=192.168.137.0/24

OPTIONAL if you have another set of subnet, remember to add rightaway after the first one, otherwise you will have to reset everything and do it again but with all the subnet you want to add.

then, go to Tailscale

Enable ICS subnet routing


click Edit Route Setting on that Windows Machine.Turn on the Subnet Route , all done!

that’s it! :slightly_smiling_face:

Copying files over different subnets without configuring Windows Firewall, at 56 MBps.


** Tailscale Subnet routing performs best with a Linux machine (physical or virtual router running Linux such as OpenWRT for example), but performance is acceptable with recent Tailscale development since version 1.26 and higher on Windows.


Any idea why, device is still slow blinking?


Hmm managed to sign in but it’s now asking me to set up via mobile.
Still slow blinking and mot showing on mobile app. If I try to add new device and use code from bottom it says already added.
Can access the public folder through my Mac and read and write to it, but not any of my files saved on the MCH

I guess it is going to take more than 10 minutes on the Mac. The truth is I have never tried it on the Mac and it is possible that recent changes in security settings has prevented a MCH user from authentication with the Western Digital server when using ICS.

The ICS is working fine as these pages were reached using the ip of the MCH.

First it said device not ready then later allowed me to login, but rather than access the MCH it went to the screen as if it’s a new device not been set up, and asking to set up on mobile app.

Or am I missing something?

Thanks for the reply

This may still be an authentication problem.

In the case of macOS, some MCH users were able to use Chrome or Edge browser to log in successfully when Safari could not. It may be a matter of other browsers that can track users more heavily than Safari.