Router with decent file transfer speeds to USB network drive?

[canoebrain]

Hi all,

I'm currently in the market for a new router. My ASUS RT-N66U seems to be dying. It's started to really slow down when I transfer files from my Windows machines to the attached USB drive... It'll start transferring at about 13MBs, then slowly (sometimes quickly) drop down to below 1MBs and often drop out completely and disconnect. The PCs I'm transferring from are connected straight into the ethernet ports in the router. It seems to be getting worse, and I just don't have the patience for it any more.

In general, I've been happy with it. I have 2 Windows PCs, 1 openelec ZBOX, a USB hard drive, 2 iPads and 2 iPhones running on it most of the time and it does a fine job. I'm not a heavy online gamer. I use a VPN sometimes for streaming online video, and 1 PC and my openelec box use the USB network drive for streaming video files from (Kodi).

My biggest concern is slow transfer speeds from my PCs to my network drive - they're driving me crazy. If I could get between 10 and 13MBs consistently I'd be happy.

None of my hardwired network cable supports gigabit, and my newest phone is an iPhone 5, so I don't even think I'll be utilizing the faster wireless specs yet.

I don't mind a little bit of "overkill" in a new router - that is, I will upgrade my cabling at some point and eventually my iPhone 5 will get replaced.

Based on reviews I've been reading (and current sales) I was originally thinking either the D-Link AC5300 Ultra Wi-Fi Router (DIR-895L/R) or the Linksys EA9500 Max-Stream AC5400 MU-MIMO Gigabit Router. The D-Link seemed to have faster wired file transfer speeds than the Linksys, but the Linksys had 8 ports instead of the standard 4 (don't absolutely need it, but I could use a 5th port).

Based on some stuff I read here though, I'm thinking the ASUS RT-AC1900P might just suit me fine. It seems to be on sale at best buy right now too.

I do seem to have quite a bit running on my network when I think about it, but I'm not sure it warrants a $400 router... My internet speed is 10Mbs at best (rural, wireless)...

I just don't know... anyone have any suggestions? Even just a little advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[wocram]

Using the RT-AC1900p with AsusWRT-Merlin firmware since 4 months and I am very happy with it.

USB Speeds that I experience with the RT-AC1900p are as follows:
Upload to Flash Disk (on USB2.0): ~13MB/s
Download from Flash Disk (on USB2.0): ~20MB/s
Upload to HDD (on USB3.0): ~23MB/s
Download from HDD (on USB3.0): 30-50MB/s

Hope that helps!

 

[joegreat]

USB Transfer Speed is CPU bound - as the small router has no DMA (Direct Memory Access) or other helpers, the transfer need to go thru the small ARM CPU: Either you select the router with the highest default CPU speed or you overclock (with some risks) the router to get more USB Transfer Speed.

The above measured transfer rates from @wocram are the typical speed the small ARM CPU can do - but keep in mind that you have to have a GigaBit network between the router and the PC to get more the 10 MBytes/sec...

 

[wocram]

Sure a dedicated NAS would be the best solution when using network shares regularly.

However, these little modern routers with their small ARM CPU's already have enough processing power to saturate a 100mbps ethernet connection. Several of my personal contacts still have a 100mbps LAN at home and even 2 have a NAS..

 

[canoebrain]

@wocram @joegreat - Thanks for the info! I ended up going with the RT-AC1900p. I'm very happy with it - much faster than my old one. I am able to transfer from my PCs up to the USB drive at around 20MBs (average - it goes between 29 and 11), which is good enough for me. I don't mind waiting minutes for a transfer - it's the 5+ hours I couldn't deal with.

That said - although this new router IS faster, it seems my biggest problem was actually my hard drive. It was too full. I cleared up some space on, tried a defrag and now it's as fast as I'd expect - faster now with the new router. I don't know why I didn't think of that before...

Oh well, I like this new router a lot - I never got 29MBs uploading to my USB drive before (that's USB 2 - I haven't upgraded to USB 3 yet) - it's very exciting! Hahaha

I'm seeing a definite speed increase on all of my other devices too. My old router switched devices automatically between the 2.4 and 5GHz channels, but this one gave me two separate networks that I got to choose between myself. Nice.

EDIT - I must have installed cat5e when I ran the cabling and not even been aware - I'm definitely getting over 10MBs.

 

[sfx2000]

FWIW - the current speed champs for USB shared disk performance are based on Marvell Armada and the Annapurna Labs Alpine series... (which makes sense, as both are NAS oriented first, but some vendors have pulled them into the BHR arena)

These two chipsets are probably 10-20 percent faster (sometimes more) than the Broadcom or QC-Atheros solutions...

 

[Trip]

If you're going to hit that share with even a modest degree of access and/or parallel read/write, I would highly consider a move towards standalone network storage, which can come in several forms (not just pricey appliances). Even an old x86 machine re-purposed as a file server would be more preferential for consistent multi-client LAN access than hanging a USB drive of your all-in-one and hoping for the best...

I know that's not necessarily the answer your looking for, but just something to consider.