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RT-N18U USB 3.0 port speed issue

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Bhasar

New Around Here
Has anyone tried USB 3.0 ports on Asus Routers? I bought two RT-N18U routers for a project which demands IO speeds of USB 3 from a SMB / SAMBA share.

Unfortunately the speeds from both the USB ports (there are 2 on this router, one 3.0 and one 2.0) are the same and max out at 29.6 MBps (read speed). That' a little less than the practical max speed of USB 2.0.

The drive cconnected is WD my passport ultra (1TB) which when connected directly to my laptop on USB 3, yields 110 MBps (read speed).

This drive, when connected to the router (on either of the ports) yields 29.6 MBps read speed when my laptop is connected to the gigabit port of the router.

I have a NAS that yields 80MBps on wired connection on the same port on my laptop and hence the ethernet port can't be the bottleneck either.

What is the point of putting in a USB 3 port which works as USB 2? Or am I missing something somewhere?

The firmaware on the router is already updated to the latest available.

Any help and guidance will be highly appreciated.
 
Disable the USB 3.0 interference reduction setting under Wireless -> Professional, then reboot.

You will never get anything near a real NAS performance however. This is a router, optimized for routing traffic, not for disk I/O.
 
You will never get anything near a real NAS performance however. This is a router, optimized for routing traffic, not for disk I/O.
I'd agree with that (although I don't have this particular router), but then it's rather misleading that ASUS are promoting this device as "Built-in USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports for up to 10 times faster transfer speeds to storage devices" and "making it perfect for high-speed file sharing or audio and HD video streaming".
 
'Up to' is the marketer's body armor.

'high-speed' file sharing depends on which sneaker net you depended on before.
 
Thanks a ton RMerlin !! I am now getting 45 MBps read speeds from the attached drive over gigabit lan. I have done my homework so won't ask you what I may lose by enabling this feature. However, can you please help me with the following:
  • Although I am getting 45 MBps throughput from the drive on USB 3.0 port via the gigabit ports of the router, when I access the drive via WiFi, the total throughput drops to 13-15 MBps when my laptop is a foot or so away from the router. I am able to squeeze upto 17 MBps with multiple clients. I understand that this is because of the nature of WiFi and I will get half the speed that I will get via wired ports (and hence max 24 MBps over wifi from USB 3.0 for this drive in ideal world). Is my understanding correct and should I be satisfied with this explanation?
  • If I were to enable QoS and specify 1 Mbps (Mega bits pe second) as max bandwidth per client, theoritically, I can easily serve 100 concurrent clients from this drive over WiFi LAN with each getting files at 1 Mbps at the same time. However, I am given to believe that to achieve this kind of concurrency, I may require either a sophisticated mesh network or atleast 2-3 APs connected to the router. I am not able to digest this. Why should one router have problems in handling 100 concurrent devices if all that I need is 1 Mbps throughput per device? Will a dual core router with more RAM help? The hall where I need to do this is not more than 4000 sq. ft.
  • I get the point about NAS and higher throughputs via NAS but I am happy with 100 Mbps throughput via the USB drive which costs half the price of a single bay NAS and does not require power separately. I understand that with disk I/O I am taxing the router and I can see RAM usage constantly at 80% at peak IO throughput (17MBps) however the CPU usage is minimal. When a 100 users concurrently connect, will the processor become the bottleneck? I am assuming that RAM usage will not increase much further. I also understand that if I use the NAS, the RAM usage on router will probably be much lower but I will have another device in the ecosystem that will need to handle 100 transmissions and I will need to assess capabilities of such NAS systems. Do I need to go there?
Summary : The network will have 100 concurrent users who will not be on the internet (it is a local LAN) and each one will be downlaoding a file from the network share at NO MORE than 1 Mbps (I actually need only 750 Kbps throughput per device). I do not need encryption or any other sophisticated features that may further tax the router except QoS. Can this router do the trick or should I be falling back to the tried and tested meshes?

Apologies for asking these many noobish questions but i have not been getting answers with my research.

Thanks a Ton once again for all the help.
 
Your wireless throughput is probably determined by a) the channel width in use (20MHz or 40MHz), and b) the number of antennas (spatial streams) the laptop has. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11n-2009#Data_rates

For example, if your laptop only has 2 internal antennas and the router is using 20MHz channel width then the maximum link speed possible would be 144.4Mbps (18.1MBps). The real-world throughput being closer to 2/3 of that.
 
Thanks a ton RMerlin !! I am now getting 45 MBps read speeds from the attached drive over gigabit lan. I have done my homework so won't ask you what I may lose by enabling this feature. However, can you please help me with the following:
  • Although I am getting 45 MBps throughput from the drive on USB 3.0 port via the gigabit ports of the router, when I access the drive via WiFi, the total throughput drops to 13-15 MBps when my laptop is a foot or so away from the router. I am able to squeeze upto 17 MBps with multiple clients. I understand that this is because of the nature of WiFi and I will get half the speed that I will get via wired ports (and hence max 24 MBps over wifi from USB 3.0 for this drive in ideal world). Is my understanding correct and should I be satisfied with this explanation?
15 MB/s = 150 Mbps. This is the expected speed for a 300 Mbps 802.11n connection, there's roughly 50% overhead from encryption and other things related to the nature of wireless.

Summary : The network will have 100 concurrent users who will not be on the internet (it is a local LAN) and each one will be downlaoding a file from the network share at NO MORE than 1 Mbps

Don't even think about it. The router has a limitation of FIVE concurrent SMB users.

You really need a NAS for what you describe (and not a 100$ entry-level one either, not with so many users). A router is nowhere close to being able to accommodate what you need out of file sharing.
 
Thanks RMerlin and ColinTaylor for your patience and all the help.

RMerlin said:
Don't even think about it. The router has a limitation of FIVE concurrent SMB users.
I did see that limit on USB access but the newer firmware has moved that limit from overall USB Access Settings to just the FTP. So I thought someone has realized and fixed the limit only for FTP connections to the Disk(s) and not via SMB.

I undertsnad now that I may need a NAS to support 100 concurrent file transfers (even at 1 Mbps per transfer). However, Do I have the right router for that kind of concurrency (100 concurrent users just to access the disk at 1 Mbps) or should I be paying heed to others and deploy APs?

ASUS claims that the router can support 300,000 data sessions, so the processor should be good enough (although it is a single core). I understand that many wifi devices at one place will cause interference and all that but my throughput requirements are really very low anyway.
 
Even with a NAS capable of 100 concurrent users, you will still not be able to do this with a single or even two consumer routers over wireless.

Is this ~1MB/s data simply a file transfer or a continuous stream? With a simple file transfer, you may get away with this working on a single router. Streaming will be much more difficult for the router to sustain for that many users (or for two routers to sustain 50 users each) with a single core cpu.

Especially the RT-N18U which is limited to the low performance (high transmission cost) 2.4GHz band and the low performance single core ARM Coretex-A9 processor clocked at 800 MHz.

An AC3200 class device may be better suited to the high number of users (and of course, two would be even better), assuming of course that clients are 2.4GHz and 5GHz capable.

With the current equipment you have, this will simply not work from many different angles.
 
I did see that limit on USB access but the newer firmware has moved that limit from overall USB Access Settings to just the FTP. So I thought someone has realized and fixed the limit only for FTP connections to the Disk(s) and not via SMB.

It's a webui glitch. The same setting applies to both Samba and FTP.

I undertsnad now that I may need a NAS to support 100 concurrent file transfers (even at 1 Mbps per transfer). However, Do I have the right router for that kind of concurrency (100 concurrent users just to access the disk at 1 Mbps) or should I be paying heed to others and deploy APs?

ASUS claims that the router can support 300,000 data sessions, so the processor should be good enough (although it is a single core). I understand that many wifi devices at one place will cause interference and all that but my throughput requirements are really very low anyway.

100 wired users should be ok with this router for the purpose of LAN traffic, since that will be switched, not routed/NATed, although I'm not sure what type of Internet connection you will be using with it to support so many users - the Internet side of things might be hairy without a good connection. For wireless however you will run into major congestion issues, as wifi isn't really suited for so many concurrent users (wifi bandwidth is shared amongst all users).

Is there a reason however why you are trying to use an entry-level router to manage such a large network? Sounds like unnecessary risks to me. If I had that kind of network to setup, I would go with a dedicated, business-class router at the front, with business-class firewall support, and implement multiple access points throughout the offices to handle wifi (I can't imagine that those 100 users will all be sitting in the same room and on the same floor, so coverage will be an issue with a single AP).
 

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