Extroot on devices without usb port?

My router, TP-Link Archer c50 v4, has a flash size of 8MB. After fresh install of OpenWrt, Luci shows free space available to install packages as around 2.1MB. I want to be able to install many packages, some of which are several MB in size, and hence I'm trying to extend my firmware space by using extroot.
But the problem is, my router does not have a usb port. I want to ask the community of any possible alternate solutions. Like, would I be able to setup extroot using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) instead of an usb?

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It should be possible in theory similar to installation to tmpfs.
Just mount your share somewhere and create the appropriate simlinks.
Can I stack on a second overlayfs from RAM to temporarily install more packages? - #5 by vgaetera

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That said, your router and dhcp/ dns server would generally be the very last device to use remote filesystems on.

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@vgaetera thanks for the instructions, I will try that out
@slh yes, I agree, the latency might be little high. Still, as extroot has a fallback in case usb device is removed, I'm hoping it would be the same in case of a NAS and work as if extroot hasn't been setup in case NAS fails.

I also just found this post that offers a solution by saving ram drive to an NFS share and restoring from it after reboot

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