router advice

[mlody]

I am currently using Netgear WNDR3700v2 with the latest stock firmware and overall I am very happy with wired and wireless performance.
Lately I have started sharing my data over the USB port and I noticed that the USB performance is laughable - 1-2 MB/s.

What I am looking for is bascially something that performs as good as WNDR3700 but has a usable USB port - I am not expecting 100MB/s reads/writes like I have on my laptop USB 3.0 port when I connect my 7200 rpm drive, but I would like something that offers top possible USB perofrmance for sharing.

Thank you for any information.

 

[Doomer]

Why would you want to share over USB? Why not just create a network share?

 

[Elixer]

Pretty sure he does have a network share, a USB device is hooked up to his router via samba or something along those lines.


If you have a old computer, you could also use that, but if you really want to go the router route, then I suppose the best resource for finding a new router would be http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/view and find one in your price range.

Anyway, 1-2/MB/s is really bad. I am unsure if you can use a different firmware (like ddwrt) on that router, but, assuming there isn't a official upgrade to fix this issue, you could create a local network share, and share that with everyone on the LAN, but, you need to have that machine on all the time which is why people want the router to handle the network share.

Though, http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...ess-dual-band-gigabit-router-reviewed?start=1 shows a faster speed, if you reformat the drive to use FAT32 instead of NTFS. (I don't recommend this, NTFS is much better than FAT32 for file health, but if you don't care about this, it is a OK option.).

o test performance, I once again connected the Iomega UltraMax Pro dual-drive RAID 0 configured NAS that I use for NAS backup testing and ran the filecopy test from the NAS test suite. With the Iomega drive NTFS formatted, I measured only 3 MB/s writing and 12 MB/s reading. When I reformatted the Iomega as FAT32 and reran the filecopy, performance improved to 12 MB/s writing and 14MB/s reading.

 

[JackMDS]

There is No real good solution to this issue. The Router's USB is Good for casual storage when speed is Not an issue.

Using a Good Buffalo USB Drive with Linksys E4200 I can get 8MB/sec. No matter what I tried (including other Wireless Routers with USB) I could Not get over it.

Otherwise, use a real network Storage box the can do Giga.

 

[cmetz]

What I am looking for is bascially something that performs as good as WNDR3700 but has a usable USB port - I am not expecting 100MB/s reads/writes like I have on my laptop USB 3.0 port when I connect my 7200 rpm drive, but I would like something that offers top possible USB perofrmance for sharing.

Devices that do what you want do exist, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskS...words=DS213air

But in my opinion this is a bad direction. You already have a reasonable wireless router, odds are anything else you replace it with isn't going to do the wireless part as well, maybe not even the network part. Instead of replacing your router with an all-in-one that's not as good at the network part, you should supplement the router you have with a NAS. Synology and QNAP are the SOHO/SMB NAS vendors you should consider, and the decent units are about $200-$300. Also, you really need to ditch USB being in the picture and put the drives directly into the NAS.

 

[mlody]

Devices that do what you want do exist, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskS...words=DS213air

But in my opinion this is a bad direction. You already have a reasonable wireless router, odds are anything else you replace it with isn't going to do the wireless part as well, maybe not even the network part. Instead of replacing your router with an all-in-one that's not as good at the network part, you should supplement the router you have with a NAS. Synology and QNAP are the SOHO/SMB NAS vendors you should consider, and the decent units are about $200-$300. Also, you really need to ditch USB being in the picture and put the drives directly into the NAS.

You are totally right, I do not want to end up with all in one device and sacrifice my wifi performance only to get a bit faster USB HDD performance. My router is still very good and since I am not moving any time soon to AC standard, getting the latest and greatest is pointless.

Since I had posted my question, I had looked around myself and kind of leaning towards a cheap NAS - perhaps even 1 HDD since I have an external drive that I could use to do the backups every day making a dual bay NAS a bit pointless. My thinking here is that dual HDD NAS in that price range isn't any faster then a single hdd (perhaps even slower if you add raid overhead) and regardless of hard drive configuration, I wouldnt run NAS without an external backup, so 1-hdd NAS might save me some money.

Thanks

 

[VirtualLarry]

I picked up a Seagate GoFlex Home 3TB GigE NAS off of clearance.bestbuy.com for $123 shipped, after a 22% off promo code (no longer valid). They still have them for $150 + tax. Not as good a deal as I got, but still decent.

Be warned, choose a long/good password, because it automagically has "cloud" remote-access features, that you can't seem to opt out of. (Good for gov't surveillance?)

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Before you buy anything, you could install DD-WRT and see if it improves USB performance. You can revert back to stock firmware if performance isn't suitable, though you may have to flash to an older stock firmware first.

 

[mlody]

Before you buy anything, you could install DD-WRT and see if it improves USB performance. You can revert back to stock firmware if performance isn't suitable, though you may have to flash to an older stock firmware first.

I had done this few times on my router and each time I had ran DD-WRT my Wi-Fi performance went to drain and that forced me to revert to stock shortly after. Thanks for the suggestion though!

 

[taq8ojh]

I would advice against DD-WRT. That project is ridiculous. Latest stable realese was what, four years ago? Any attempt to ask about current stateand future updates results in moderators immediatelly deleting such posts.

I started following Openwrt lately and it seems much better. Also much cleaner. DD-WRT gives me the impression of one huge pile of mess.