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Merlin 384.19, Samba 2 transfer rate HDD - Mojave

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webbie

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Hi all.

I have a rt68u with last stock firmware. I am considering to move to merlin 384.19 because I want to improve my Samba transfer rate.

I assume that stock is limited to smb1 but merlin uses smb2.

I’ve seen in other posts that speed in smb2 could get to 200-250 mbps. This is enough for my use (USB attached HDD as a secondary backup)

My computer is a macbook (Mojave 10.14.6). And I am not sure if I will benefit of this smb2 increase throughput as in a windows equipment.

Any merlin user can tell me if smb in merlin is going to improve my speed in a mac os system? Around these 200mbps?

Thanks a lot!!!
 
Hi all.

I have a rt68u with last stock firmware. I am considering to move to merlin 384.19 because I want to improve my Samba transfer rate.

I assume that stock is limited to smb1 but merlin uses smb2.

I’ve seen in other posts that speed in smb2 could get to 200-250 mbps. This is enough for my use (USB attached HDD as a secondary backup)

My computer is a macbook (Mojave 10.14.6). And I am not sure if I will benefit of this smb2 increase throughput as in a windows equipment.

Any merlin user can tell me if smb in merlin is going to improve my speed in a mac os system? Around these 200mbps?

Thanks a lot!!!
No. The USB will limit the read write speed. Asus stock supposedly uses SMB2 now. Get a NAS for file storage.
 
It's unlikely you'll see much difference. 200Mbps is 25MB/s, what transfer rate do you see currently?
 
Thanks!

Yesterday I tried with a 1GB file and it took ages. I had to stop it after 5 minutes because it was painfully slow (maybe 20% done at that moment).
I assumed that it was because smb1. Now I am not that sure.

I'd say that some time ago it was not that slow. But lately I have upgraded to Mojave and also my router has auto updated to the last fw.

On the other hand, time machine through Asus is working normally (slow compared to a direct USB HDD but not as slow as the 1Gb test through samba).

Right now I'm not considering a dedicated NAS since my use is very light (around 100GB transfer / year, basically an extra camera SD card backup after a trip, let's say the backup of the backup).

Could you anyone tell me the first stock fw that implemented SMB2?

Thanks a lot!

PS: 25MB/s would be more than acceptable...
 
SMBv2 by itself is not a magic bullet that automatically makes transfers faster. If anything the additional overhead could actually make it slower (by comparison to SMBv1).
 
" Hold on there. That's the first I've heard of an RT-AC68U auto-updating. "

Automatic or at least involuntary. I was happy in the 3.0.0.4.384.45717 for months and yesterday when I had a look, it was in the 3.0.0.4.385.20633, updated the 18th of september.
It is possible that around that day, I had entered in the admin page but I didn't update the code for sure. Maybe I triggered something involuntaryly while browsing the router menu.

Anyway, this last version seems quite polished so I don't care.

Concerning the SMB1 vs 2, I'll try to find out if my smb1 is underperforming because of some settings. It seems that even for smb1 I should have better transfer rates...

Thanks!
 
SMBv2 is slower than SMBv1.
 
Thanks to your comment I have done several tests.
As it is the stock fw I have post it there:


A summary. My samba performance is very low, both smb1 and smb2. It starts to send a file quite fast, but after 2 seconds it gets almost stuck...

Is it a known problem of stock fw fixed in Merlin? Or this samba part is the same in both branches?

Thanks for your help!
 
The RT-AC68U is underpowered for acting as a file server/NAS. What you're seeing is the buffers backing-up because the CPU can't keep up. I didn't notice any difference under Merlin. I did get a slightly noticeable improvement by overclocking to 1200,800. But not much. I've now switched to an inexpensive 4GB Buffalo LS220D NAS (was $200 on Amazon when I bought). Even though it is a low-end NAS, the performance is typically 80-100MBs.
 
Thanks!

I have done a test that a member suggested me. A windows 10 transfer with my work computer. And the result has been surprising. A 600MB file in 25 seconds (25MBs sustained)

My macbook has spent 5 minutes to send a 50MB file (20MB in 2 seconds but then 0.1MBs or less, virtually stuck).

So good news: AC68U is capable of deliver 25MBs which is enough for me.
Bad news. My macbook is not getting this transfer rate. Not even close.

So again, I reformulate my question. Is it possible that Merlin implementation works better with macOS? Any other hint?

Thanks for your help!
 
Is it possible that Merlin implementation works better with macOS?
Anything is possible, but you said you didn't have this problem until you updated the macbook to Mojave. Perhaps you need to update to Catalina?
 
Mistery solved.

I've finally checked that samba in macOS is only slightly slower than windows.

The problem with my previous test is that I was dragging a 50MB file which was an app. And this app is not like an .exe in windows but a folder with thousands of small files. It was not a good test.

I've transferred a similar file than in windows and rate is around 20-22MB/s. Slower but not important.

So everything is fine. I have learned that stock uses samba 2 and that ac68u is capable of deliver 20-25MBs.

Thanks for your help!
 

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