A NAS device is an appliance that directly connects to the network either through a hardwired Ethernet (RJ45) cable or via Wi-Fi, thus creating a LAN instead of WAN. It is assigned an IP address, and data transfer between users, servers, and a NAS via TCP/IP. NAS operates with a traditional file system - either a New Technology File System (NTFS) or NFS for remote file services and data sharing. All storage on the device is accessed at the file level through a file share.