HTPC as NAS + ROUTER

[Toss3]

Hi!

Have been looking around for some answers on how to optimise Windows 8.1 to function as a wireless router and NAS (if this is at all possible). The PC is connected straight to the RJ45 jack in the wall which connects to a gateway.

The hardware:

ASRock QC5000-ITX AMD A4-5000 APU (1Gbit Realtek Ethernet)​

Asus PCE-AC68 (working on channel 36, with VHT 3, 80Mhz, SGI on, etc)​

2x2Gb DDR3 RAM​

80Gb Intel X25 SSD (for testing purposes - two 2TB drives coming later)​

The problem: Getting everything connected is no problem and I have achieved speeds of up to 1Gbit using my Macbook Retina Pro (using the virtual router: netsh wlan set SSID and so forth on the HTPC), but when transferring files over the network the speed is really low: approx. 1MB/s (transferring a movie of 14Gb takes over four hours). Using my old N66U I am getting many times faster transfer speeds even though the connection speed is only 450mbit (same movie copied over in about 15 minutes).

On Speedtest.net I am able to achieve speeds of 100mbit/s on each connected device (Note 4, Macbook Retina, Gaming/Work PC) (the Tx Rate varies between 1Gbps to 866mbps). (WAN speed 100mbit)

Any settings I should be aware of that could cause issues (turned off QoS, ipv6, and everything I can think of that could affect the file transfer speed between the devices)? Really want to stay on Windows due to the PC also functioning as a HTPC for my projector and with PowerDVD (3D blu-ray) only being available on that OS.

Would be eternally grateful if anyone could help me out as I have been battling the horror that is windows for about a week or so now (setting something similar up on my GF's macbook took about two seconds and works perfectly).

 

[System Error Message]

typically i would expect to utilise only 50% of rated wireless speeds. Synthetically about 80%.

I think the AMD APU usually has a weak CPU but makes up for it with a GPU. The CPU would be comparable to an intel atom but it may be better. I would actually look at the architecture to be certain. So unless you can GPU accelerate things you're not going to be looking at really fast speeds. SMB is more resource intensive than performing NAT.

While using an OS like pfsense would be good it cannot perform SMB without a lot of effort while freeNAS doesnt act like a router despite both based on the same OS. Some run both over VMware using VMware as the OS. it is much better to use windows server than windows 8 as a router.

 

[stevech]

Have been looking around for some answers on how to optimise Windows 8.1 to function as a wireless router and NAS (if this is at all possible)..

In theory, yes.
Quite ill-advised.

 

[Toss3]

In theory, yes.
Quite ill-advised.

I know that now, but why would it work perfectly on an old macbook? I could install Windows Server 2012, but I don't know what exactly it would do that would make transfers between computers faster.

Could you maybe explain to me as to why a separate PC as a router is a bad idea as I am quite new to these things(couldn't find any decent examples and explanations using google)?

typically i would expect to utilise only 50% of rated wireless speeds. Synthetically about 80%.

I think the AMD APU usually has a weak CPU but makes up for it with a GPU. The CPU would be comparable to an intel atom but it may be better. I would actually look at the architecture to be certain. So unless you can GPU accelerate things you're not going to be looking at really fast speeds. SMB is more resource intensive than performing NAT.

While using an OS like pfsense would be good it cannot perform SMB without a lot of effort while freeNAS doesnt act like a router despite both based on the same OS. Some run both over VMware using VMware as the OS. it is much better to use windows server than windows 8 as a router.

The link speed is 1Gbit-> /2 = 500mbps -> x0,8 -> 400mbps (~48MB/s) and I'm getting 1/48th of that.

I know the AMD APU isn't the fastest CPU on the planet, but it should definitely run circles around whatever is in the n66u, and in task manager the CPU doesn't even reach 5% when moving files, so there is something else going on here. I'm guessing virtual hosted networks hasn't been a priority for Microsoft and that's why it works so shoddily as it does (could be better in Windows 7 (have an extra copy but wouldn't want to install it if I'm not sure it is actually better)).

At least the link speed is much better, but not being able to stream stuff over my home network is really frustrating.

Think I'm going to try using the same method, but on my work pc (4770k + wifi AC) and see if there is a difference.