I just do not see a point in slaving another router just for a 16GB stick, when you can either attach a NAS or a drive in a USB enclosure and make file transfer just one part of a larger storage scheme that every Mac/PC can access.
Well, you're comparing bicycles to cars: in some situations they are loosely the same thing, but they are in a completely different price category, and picked for quite different reasons.
For one, most people already own a USB stick and an obsolete router, and if not, they are cheap or even free.
This was the case for me too: my internet service provider suddenly more than doubled the monthly cost so I had to change services, but the other provider didn't offer service over the telephone lines, only the antenna network. So I had to get a different router for that. Furthermore, that router was already set up to act as a bridge between my computer and a smart lighting hub which are going to be a major pain to migrate or reconfigure because I've done so much customising. The wireless protocol of an old router can also remain more accessible to old machines if the newest routers either don't support older protocols anymore, or you want to use an up to date internet router as an additional security layer for one that hasn't received updates for a very long time. You might even keep your hobby stuff in a different network than your serious systems that have sensitive personal data.
So I'm keeping the old router in order to give myself time to properly think of the reconfiguration and migration process, and, because the USB port on it turned out to be not just very practical, but surprisingly, somewhat uncommon. Obviously, if someone is going to shop for a
brand new router, they can just have that one router that provides the internet
and has the USB port. They would have at least one router anyway, so why not pick one with a USB port for mass media, if it's available?
The only reason why I suggested the USB port router as an
extra in a chain is because people might already have an extra lying around, or able to get one even for free. It's an option that's easily forgotten because it's not what routers are primarily known for. "Cloud lite", if that's all you need.
It's not like an extra router takes up more space than a NAS. NAS is necessary if you genuinely need to have hundreds of gigabytes of data always accessible and shared between several computers, and I just don't. I mostly exchange individual files and documents when I've been working on something with a given computer, and a network USB stick works perfectly for the job.
So, as with cars vs. bicycles, you just have to ask what
you really
need, and how much spendable resources you have.
I dislike FTP for the primary reason that it often requires a third party app to use.
Ah, I come across those whenever browsing for Mac apps, always wondering if they were still being used.
My Ventura machine is the only one that's unable to access the SMB drive. Not sure if that's a Ventura or Open Core issue though.
