What's new
  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

Asus RT-Ac86u usb hdd and problem with play mkv from this hdd

WulkanOS

Occasional Visitor
Hi
This is my first post on the forum. I've owned an Asus RT-AC86U for nearly 2 years now and apart from some minor issues I'm happy with it. There was a problem with it when every few days or even hours the WiFi 2.4 would stop working and only turning it off/on helped, but after a recent upgrade to Asuswrt-Merlin 386.11 the problem disappeared. Now another one has appeared, namely I have a 4TB USB HDD connected to the router and running dlna, ftp, samba servers so I can via lan copy orat play movies on tv or media player. For over a year everything worked perfectly but for the last few months this has been a big problem. On tV after dlna, a few minutes after starting playback, films buffer every now and then, cut, cannot be watched. The situation is similar on media player. The films are mkv 2160p hdr files. Whenever a video frames every few minutes, the cpu load on the router reaches 100%. When copying files from router disk to computer etc router cpu fluctuates between 40-60%. The disk is with ntfs file system.
Please help.
 
Welcome to the forums @WulkanOS.

The only long-term solution is to use a real NAS (and not USB-attached storage on the router).
 
Check your drive for file system errors. Routers are not the right place to plug your drive in and may corrupt the drive. This specific router is easy to crash with file transfers to external storage. Related Out Of Memory conditions may crash services running on it as well. Get a NAS and leave the router alone.
 
Check your drive for file system errors. Routers are not the right place to plug your drive in and may corrupt the drive. This specific router is easy to crash with file transfers to external storage. Related Out Of Memory conditions may crash services running on it as well. Get a NAS and leave the router alone.
I don’t have NAS
 
Attached USB storage on Asus routers may work for light file sharing with no ill effects, but you have big size file transfers. Your router has only 150MB RAM available after boot. With Samba shares your RAM is at minimum 97% utilization. Linux based systems have efficient RAM management, but they can't manage non-existent RAM. Look at your System Log for OOM messages or storage related messages. Your movie files will perhaps grow in size and you may run into more serious issues. For reliability and performance you have to think about getting a real NAS box.
 
Attached USB storage on Asus routers may work for light file sharing with no ill effects, but you have big size file transfers. Your router has only 150MB RAM available after boot. With Samba shares your RAM is at minimum 97% utilization. Linux based systems have efficient RAM management, but they can't manage non-existent RAM. Look at your System Log for OOM messages or storage related messages. Your movie files will perhaps grow in size and you may run into more serious issues. For reliability and performance you have to think about getting a real NAS box.
Swap file could help?
 
No. Dead slow on USB attached storage. People running Asuswrt-Merlin firmware and custom scripts have the option to create one, but it's there mostly for compatibility and when the scripts need some more space when updating blocklists. What you can try is switching your port to USB 2.0 to slow down the transfers. Sometimes it helps as temporary measure.
 
Hi
This is my first post on the forum. I've owned an Asus RT-AC86U for nearly 2 years now and apart from some minor issues I'm happy with it. There was a problem with it when every few days or even hours the WiFi 2.4 would stop working and only turning it off/on helped, but after a recent upgrade to Asuswrt-Merlin 386.11 the problem disappeared. Now another one has appeared, namely I have a 4TB USB HDD connected to the router and running dlna, ftp, samba servers so I can via lan copy orat play movies on tv or media player. For over a year everything worked perfectly but for the last few months this has been a big problem. On tV after dlna, a few minutes after starting playback, films buffer every now and then, cut, cannot be watched. The situation is similar on media player. The films are mkv 2160p hdr files. Whenever a video frames every few minutes, the cpu load on the router reaches 100%. When copying files from router disk to computer etc router cpu fluctuates between 40-60%. The disk is with ntfs file system.
Please help.
You can simply test it with a USB Flash Drive. If it works fine with a USB Flash Drive your HDD is dead.
Both USB 2.0 and 3.0 work fine with 2160p HDR MKV files even if 1 file size is over 30gb.
 
Attached USB storage on Asus routers may work for light file sharing with no ill effects, but you have big size file transfers. Your router has only 150MB RAM available after boot. With Samba shares your RAM is at minimum 97% utilization. Linux based systems have efficient RAM management, but they can't manage non-existent RAM. Look at your System Log for OOM messages or storage related messages. Your movie files will perhaps grow in size and you may run into more serious issues. For reliability and performance you have to think about getting a real NAS box.
My router have 512MB RAM
 
@WulkanOS, generally if you are getting buffering while playing a video file from a network location it tends to be one of three things. A problem with the network connection, a problem with the device that stores and streams the media to clients, or a problem with the client's media player.

As others have previously explained, the RT-AC86U is not a NAS and is generally not a very good media streamer due to the router's hardware and features. Trying to stream large sized media files may cause the RT-AC86U to struggle. It can be made worse if the network or WiFi connection is poor (low speed).

Some suggestions if you haven't tried them already:
Check the client network device connections to the router. Make sure they are the fastest speed possible.
Check what features and options you have enabled on the router. Things like VPN, AiProtection and others may impact router performance.
If network clients are using WiFi, check the router's WiFi settings and what it is reporting for client WiFi connections. Could be your WiFi environment has gotten worse leading to slower WiFi speeds.
Update the router to the latest firmware. Perform a hard factory reset and manually reconfigure the router.
Reboot the router.
Disconnect all other network clients except one form the router and test with a single client device connected to see if the buffering continues.

But at the end of the day the buffering issue while streaming large files may persist simply due to the age of the router and it's limitations, both hardware and media streaming capabilities. You indicating the CPU load while streaming is at 100% is a strong indicator the router may be struggling to stream media. As others above indicated if you do a lot of media streaming you may want to consider setting up a dedicated NAS and relive the router of struggling to perform media streaming in addition to the other tasks it normally performs. And with the RT-AC86U being End of Life (and an aged router) you may want to consider upgrading to a newer router model if you can.
 
Everything you write about I checked, tested.
Well, then please explain to me why such services as samba, nfs, ftp locally work without any problems, and streaming yes from bitrate from 30 Mbit/s it stutters.
It seems to me that copying files over lan is a bigger load on the router like streaming.
Am I wrong?
I also have a VU+Uno 4k sat tuner at home and streaming from it works perfectly, and it seems to me to be a weaker device like the AC-86u router

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Everything you write about I checked, tested.
Well, then please explain to me why such services as samba, nfs, ftp locally work without any problems, and streaming yes from bitrate from 30 Mbit/s it stutters.
It seems to me that copying files over lan is a bigger load on the router like streaming.
Am I wrong?
I also have a VU+Uno 4k sat tuner at home and streaming from it works perfectly, and it seems to me to be a weaker device like the AC-86u router
 
Well, then please explain to me why such services as samba, nfs, ftp locally work without any problems, and streaming yes from bitrate from 30 Mbit/s it stutters.
It seems to me that copying files over lan is a bigger load on the router like streaming.
Media streaming is a separate service (MiniDLNA if I remember right) from Samba/SMB, FTP, NFS, etc. Its a program/service that typically will struggle with streaming large high bitrate media files, and may struggle with large media collections. MiniDLNA performs a number of actions that can tax the limited hardware of an aging router already struggling to run other processes (options/features). This includes how it processes and streams large high bitrate media over the DLNA protocol to DLNA clients.

If the buffering only happens on certain media files, try encoding that file into a lower format/bit rate or different format (MKV to MP4 for example) and see if that reduces the buffering.
Make sure to use a USB 3.0 hard drive (preferably SSD if possible) and connect it to the USB 3.0 port on the router. Avoid using USB flash/stick drives.

Do a internet search for miniDLNA and buffering, there is a lot of talk about the problem.

At the end of the day you are likely asking the router to handle something it may not be designed or capable of handling (large high bitrate video files). There are streaming limitations even on dedicated NAS units due to how media streaming, particularly large high bitrate media, can tax the device's hardware.
 

Latest threads

Support SNBForums w/ Amazon

If you'd like to support SNBForums, just use this link and buy anything on Amazon. Thanks!

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Back
Top