I did a factory reset on one of my N7700's today and was surprised to find out that my WAN IP was changed to 192.168.x.x.

I configured all of my Thecus NAS with the LAN port connecting to my private cluster. We use the Thecus boxes to archive cluster data and so the LAN port is connected to the cluster's private 192.168.x.x network while the WAN port is connected to the corporate network. The idea is to have cluster users and cluster compute nodes communicate with the NAS via the private IP (via LAN) and the world to communicate with the NAS via the WAN port.

This way, I have multiple way to reach my NAS if needed. I can either come in on the WAN port, or come in on the cluster frontend and ssh over the NAS via the private IP address.

When I did a factory reset this morning, I lost all connection to the NAS. My WAN port got a default 192.168.x.x network and the LAN port is nowhere to be seen.

I swapped the two ports today. WAN is now 192.168.x.x and LAN now has the corporate DNS registered IP.

While I don't see any complication at this moment, does anyone know if swapping these ports has any consequence?

Does WAN and LAN has any function, special feature? Or does Thecus just label these ports for the sake of labeling?