Cisco Linksys E3000 High Performance Wireless-N Router Reviewed

[stevech]

dropped in newer version of firmware? A guess.

 

[wats6831]

I recently picked up a E3000. I have 3 wired devices and 3 wireless devices on it most of the time. All are wireless N, one is 5 ghz N.

Anyway, I haven't been happy at all with the performance so far. I was downloading on soulseek, and I logged onto WoW. After about 5 mins, I was disconnected and the router 1 gigabit port started blinking strangely turning color from green to blue and then going out and back and forth.

Obviously all the downloads on SS were erroring out as well. While Windows still showed the connection, obviously it was dropping connection.

I rebooted the router, and tried limiting my upload in Soulseek. It did the same behavior.

On top of that, i have WoW as top priority in the QoS. So this leads me to two things:

1. QoS isn't working.
2. The router isn't handling simultaneous connections well at all and basically locking up.

This is leading me to consider DD-WRT on this router. I'm fairly advanced, have owned and flashed my fair share of routers.

My old TrendNET TEW-633GR never had any problems with the same scenario. I also had a WNDR3700, it was also a piece of garbage. Not sure where to turn now.

Are there any settings I could try to clear up these issues? Thanks.

 

[grazzt]

So If I am reading the review the correct, the max throughput for the E3000 is 200 Mbps? I thought this is a 10/100/1000 device? So why are you getting 1/5 of the rated speed?

 

[DaveMcLain]

On the router the switch is able to run at 1000Mbs and it's able to transfer data through the switch and around the LAN at much higher rates than it can transfer from LAN to WAN or vice versa through the router. 200Mbs would be faster than nearly all home internet connections so it should be adequate.

 

[grazzt]

On the router the switch is able to run at 1000Mbs and it's able to transfer data through the switch and around the LAN at much higher rates than it can transfer from LAN to WAN or vice versa through the router. 200Mbs would be faster than nearly all home internet connections so it should be adequate.

Thanks for the quick reply. I understand that the LAN to WAN will be somewhere around 25-50 Mbps (I have comcast), but the LAN is what what I am more concerned with. I am looking to invest into a NAS (Synlogy, Qnap, etc.) because I want better transfer speeds that the USB storage option on the E3000 (32-72 Mbps, 4-9 MB/s). I take a lot of HD video and I can easily go through 8-32 GB that I will need to transfer.

Thanks

 

[DaveMcLain]

I think that what you'll find is that the switch will move data at essentially "wire speed" and it won't be a bottleneck. A computer wired to the switch to a speedy NAS that's also wired to the switch will be much faster than going to the a hard drive attached to the USB port on the router which is known to be very slow. I don't think that this is isolated to the Linksys routers and I can't think of one router review that I've ever read where they said that data transfer to a USB attached drive was speedy.

 

[grazzt]

Maybe I am not following. I know I will get very slow performance using a USB storage unit. I max out at about 9 MB/s. So when I read the review of this router, the max speed is about 220 Mbps. So if I hook up a NAS that can transfer data at 1000 Mbps then my E3000 will be rate limiting, correct? If I hook up my 2 Laptops (wired) I will be able to transfer files at 220 Mbps not 1000 Mbps, correct with this router?

There was another router review (Dlink i think), that you were getting 650 Mbps. So if I had this router and speedy NAS, I would theoretically get 650 Mbps with that and 220 Mbps with the E3000?

grazzt

 

[thiggins]

The speeds posted in the Router Charts are routing performance, i.e. WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN. LAN to LAN transfers do not go through the routing section of the router, only the switch. So you will see "wire speed" performance, i.e. close to 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps depending on the switch port and client adapter speed.

 

[grazzt]

The speeds posted in the Router Charts are routing performance, i.e. WAN to LAN and LAN to WAN. LAN to LAN transfers do not go through the routing section of the router, only the switch. So you will see "wire speed" performance, i.e. close to 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps depending on the switch port and client adapter speed.

Great! That makes me very happy then. Thanks for the clarification!

Scott