Could firmware improve USB stability/reliability?

[3_50]

Could a firmware update improve the stability of the USB port, or get it to read and write fast enough to make full use of a 1200Mbps wifi connection?

I have an Asus RT-AX86U (just flashed with Merlin 388.9_2), bought to host an external drive (Acasis NVMe enclosure, 4TB Corsair stick, NTFS) - got sick of having to unmount when moving the laptop from its TV dock every day.

Currently over wifi I get 40MB/s write, 77MB/s read. 1GbE wired I get 90MB write/110MB read. Any idea why the wifi is so much slower? At 3ft from the router, by all accounts it should have a faster connection than the wired. Any settings to tweak? I don't really understand 90% of the options on here.

All threads I could find advise against this and suggest a proper NAS box, but the options I've explored will cost me £50 per year in electricity just to idle (~20W), and aren't portable. The router & drive is ~9W under load and I have that running 24/7 anyway. All I need is easy access extended storage for my laptop (for replaceable data, nothing imporant, no backups etc).

Could custom firmware fix the problems people are cautioning about? I'd pay good money for something like that, since alternative options are £hundreds for extra hardware, electricity etc...

 

[ColinTaylor]

You mention read and write speeds but what are the stability and reliability problems you state in your title?

 

[3_50]

I've not seen any yet, just regurgitating the warnings given in other threads. Granted I couldn't find threads with people complaining of data loss/corruption, only others warning that it might happen...

 

[mlord]

> Any idea why the wifi is so much slower [than ethernet]?

Much higher latency over WiFi than over the GigE connection. So the I/O transactions don't happen as quickly, which then slows down throughput.

 

[bbunge]

Set the 5 GHz to 80 MHz on Auto channel. Formatting the drive to EXT4 may help a bit. Using Merlin firmware with Samba set to SMB2 might help. Otherwise your speed results are not far off the mark for USB 3.

 

[degrub]

> Any idea why the wifi is so much slower [than ethernet]?

Much higher latency over WiFi than over the GigE connection. So the I/O transactions don't happen as quickly, which then slows down throughput.

And wifi is inherently half duplex. Bit rate / 2

 

[ColinTaylor]

And wifi is inherently half duplex.

True.

Bit rate / 2

Not necessarily true. The volume of data in one direction is not usually the same as the volume of data in the other direction.

 

[bbunge]

And wifi is inherently half duplex. Bit rate / 2

Remember what Ethernet was like before switches? With the old hubs Ethernet was always detecting packet collisions and stopping transmission until the collisions cleared.
WIFI is worse in some ways. It is built in to avoid collisions but not detect them. It is like every member of your family talking at once. Some conversations get through and some have to wait and start over. Well, it is not really that bad as it happens so fast and modern WIFI us sure better than "B" or "G" even though I still feel the old WRT54G was one heck of a router!

 

[Tech9]

Otherwise your speed results are not far off the mark for USB 3.

On this router, limited by the hardware. My home network storage is on USB drives, they do 180MB/s connected to mini PC.