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Best Firmware for USB Speed

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snash22

New Around Here
My primary concern with this router, RT-N56U, is the r/w speed of the USB HDD. I have seen people reference speeds increasing or decreasing with various ASUS and padavan versions, and I think the most recent padavan version someone mentioned a decrease in speed that they were unable to fix.

I am not using any of the niftier features on the router. I just use it to route my slow DSL (6 down/1.5 up), I'm not a gamer, I don't stream movies in my house. I just want to have a good networked HD, without shelling out more money for a NAS.

I have formatted my HDD as EXT3.

So, what is your opinion of which (stable) firmware has the fastest USB speeds? Or conversely, which do you know to be bad?

I'm fine with any developer, padavan, ASUS, DD-WRT, Tomatoe, etc
 
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Maybe my problem is not the FW, but it is my expectations.

I ran a test and I found that when wired, I download from my USB at about 15MB/s.

When wireless, it is about 5MB/s.

When during the test, I was about 5 feet from the router, no wall between us.
I tried it on the 5g, and the 2.4g networks.

Should it be about the same speed wired or wireless?

Is there any setting I can change to improve the USB speed?
 
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Maybe my problem is not the FW, but it is my expectations.

I ran a test and I found that when wired, I download from my USB at about 15MB/s.

When wireless, it is about 5MB/s.

When during the test, I was about 5 feet from the router, no wall between us.
I tried it on the 5g, and the 2.4g networks.

Should it be about the same speed wired or wireless?

Is there any setting I can change to improve the USB speed?

That's about as good as it gets. These routers have pretty weak CPUs, and their USB controllers aren't as high performance as those found on a regular motherboard.
 
That's about as good as it gets. These routers have pretty weak CPUs, and their USB controllers aren't as high performance as those found on a regular motherboard.

True, I understand this isn't a NAS, so my expectations should be low.

But why would it be 3x faster wired than wireless?
 
True, I understand this isn't a NAS, so my expectations should be low.

But why would it be 3x faster wired than wireless?

Not knowing which speed your wireless is connected at, it's impossible to tell.
 
Not knowing which speed your wireless is connected at, it's impossible to tell.

I am using Win7. The Wireless Network Connection Status says 300Mbps.

On the n56u:

  • Firmware - 3.0.0.4.318*
  • 2.4GHz
  • Wireless Mode - Auto
  • WPA2-Personal
  • Multicast Rate - Disabled (There is no "Auto" to select even though it is recommended)

*- This is just the latest firmware I have tried. There has been little or no difference trying 1., 3., and Padavan firmware.
 
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I wish I could give you a technical reason why the wireless transfers are slower, but I can't.

I've just accepted wireless transfers (up or down) are slow. BUT, I can say the rates are fast enough to steam 1080p vids to my TV, which is fine by me :D
 
Can anyone do a few USB tests comparing wired and wireless USB speeds?

It seems to me that there should be no difference, assuming the wireless is set up properly.

If everyone has this trouble, perhaps this could be an issue to be raised with the FW developers. Or if only some people have the problem we could look for differences.
 
Padavan's latest firmware (3.0.3.3-038) is a major improvement for wired USB speed and a modest improvement for wireless.

Wired it went up from 15MB/s to 25MB/s!

Wireless it went from 5MB/s to 6MB/s.

From the changelog:
- Added support scatter/gather DMA to Ralink Ethernet driver (raeth). S/G DMA allow boost local TX traffic up to 2x times. Read speed now up to ~21MB/s (from USB2), up to ~34MB/s (from USB3). Drop ASUS binary raeth_asus.obj.​
 
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Padavan's latest firmware (3.0.3.3-038) is a major improvement for wired USB speed and a modest improvement for wireless.

Wired it went up from 15MB/s to 25MB/s!

Wireless it went from 5MB/s to 6MB/s.

From the changelog:
- Added support scatter/gather DMA to Ralink Ethernet driver (raeth). S/G DMA allow boost local TX traffic up to 2x times. Read speed now up to ~21MB/s (from USB2), up to ~34MB/s (from USB3). Drop ASUS binary raeth_asus.obj.​

I'm using one of the recent Padavan firmware on my N56U and my max speed on a wired network is 12 MB/s - Is there another setting I should be changing? Does the file system type make a diff? I currently have it as a ntfs so I can plug it back on my WindozeBox if need be.

Thanks
 
Isn't the difference (wired to wireless) that the wired connection has much less overhead vs. WiFi? Along with the relatively slow cpu (which USB heavily penalizes, it seems) the results are as expected.

Wired is full duplex (bi-directional) and uses a different (better) encoding scheme than 'N' wireless schemes; which is only half duplex and needs to check the airwaves before it can send anything to a client device.

It's pretty amazing that a firmware update can get us a 20% increase in wireless USB speeds from an older router.

And yes, the file system type does make a difference in the speeds achievable.

Are you running a full gigabyte lan architecture?
 
And yes, the file system type does make a difference in the speeds achievable.

Are you running a full gigabyte lan architecture?

Thanks for the quick reply and details!

Yes I'm running a full gigabyte lan.
Perhaps I will format that drive as a ext4 and see how that affects lan transfer speeds. It's a 3TB Seagate drive (which according to Asus's site does in fact support 3TB drives - not just 2TB as the manual states)

Thanks
 
Thanks for the quick reply and details!

Yes I'm running a full gigabyte lan.
Perhaps I will format that drive as a ext4 and see how that affects lan transfer speeds. It's a 3TB Seagate drive (which according to Asus's site does in fact support 3TB drives - not just 2TB as the manual states)

Thanks

ext4 is only supported on the RT-AC56/rt-AC68U.

3TB support with Asus's stock firmware is hit-or-miss. Additional kernel patching was needed for instance with my NexStar CX + WD Caviar Green 3TB to work properly (the patch is applied to my custom firmware but not to the stock FW).
 

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