Fast wireless routers for NAS

boyfalldown

boyfalldown

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Due to the speed limitations of my VM super hub I have to connect my NAS directly to my computer. Obviously this rather defeats the post, but due to the layout at home the only practical layout is to have a router downstairs with my office upstairs. If I want to move my NAS downstairs is there a wireless router fast enough to do it?
 
neil_g said:
depends what youre accessing.. even on the fastest wireless i wouldnt want to access a lightroom file store for example.
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thanks Neil, I was wondering if I could find something fast enough that would let me edit with the catalog stored locally.
 
Run a gigabit cable. Powerline never gets that high a speed.

I view gigabit networking a bit like electric sockets these days. Every room should have one (I don't follow my own advice :D - only 2 rooms are cabled here, but if I ever do any more work on the house....)
 
Cost £60 to get someone to run 2 runs of cat 5 around the outside of my parents house. It has to be done!
 
Power line isn't up to the job. I have 500mb adapters between my office and living room and it struggles a bit. When the neighbours run their electric mower it pretty much scrambles it.

Run a cable :)
 
Power line isn't up to the job. I have 500mb adapters between my office and living room and it struggles a bit. When the neighbours run their electric mower it pretty much scrambles it.
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I would be worried about my house wiring if my neighbours lawnmower was affecting it :eek: I've used 500mb adapters with no problems but they wil never be as good as cat 5/6 cable.

However, be careful when running cat 5/6 cables that you have no bottle necks in your LAN, the majority of routers only have 100Mbps ports and not gigabit so this can be a limiting factor, you could go direct from your PC to the NAS via a gigabit switch (if you also want internet access via your router) but make sure your PC's network card is also gigabit or that will also limit the speed.
 
There are a lot of things that can screw up homeplugs, just a single rogue phone charger can mess em up. The 500MB ones are fine for a single HD video stream but the network topology in my new place (NAS, media servers etc, WAP) means it's not that simple!
 
for a single point to point link with minimal users/streams they're okay. (albeit not as good as an actual gigabit cat5/6)

ive actually got 3 in my 1930s built house and they're faultless for linking WAPs and the WDTV back to the main network.
 
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I would opt for Ethernet if at all possible, but I've got a Powerline adapter and that works fairly well. Probably not as fast as Ethernet, but is more than adequate for data transfer. Also much easier to move around. My BT unit has two Ethernet outlets and is an extra wireless router ( although not used the wireless router so I don't know how efficient it is )
 
The limiting factor won't be your wireless or network cable it will be your NAS device mine only supports upto 12Mb/s (actual speed) they quote 80Mb/s and thats if i'm lucky.
 
depends on how good the NAS is, what drives and the infrastructure around it are etc.

certainly over a gigabit cabled lan my old synology wasnt far off theoretical max gigabit speed if i remember rightly. it definitely wasnt slow.
 
neil_g said:
depends on how good the NAS is, what drives and the infrastructure around it are etc.

certainly over a gigabit cabled lan my old synology wasnt far off theoretical max gigabit speed if i remember rightly. it definitely wasnt slow.
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Exactly but no one has asked what NAS box Hugh has... mine is a DNS323 and it max's out transfer at 12Mb/s. So increasing speed of wireless LAN won't help.
 
I get 100MB/sec consistent to my NAS..... (self built job). I would err on assuming that any existing equipment is NOT the limiting factor - if it is, then you don't have to buy new network infrastructure when you upgrade the hardware at the other end...
 
Tintin124 said:
Exactly but no one has asked what NAS box Hugh has... mine is a DNS323 and it max's out transfer at 12Mb/s. So increasing speed of wireless LAN won't help.
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arad85 said:
I get 100MB/sec consistent to my NAS..... (self built job). I would err on assuming that any existing equipment is NOT the limiting factor - if it is, then you don't have to buy new network infrastructure when you upgrade the hardware at the other end...
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I have a synology DS213 set up as raid 1. Typically I get read speeds of 70mb/s and write speed of 50MB/s with ethernet cable direct to the port on the back of my iMac, at the moment, if I go via the VM super hub wireless I get speeds of sub 1MB/s
 
Tintin124 said:
The limiting factor won't be your wireless or network cable it will be your NAS device mine only supports upto 12Mb/s (actual speed) they quote 80Mb/s and thats if i'm lucky.
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Is the 12 from the windows file transfer dialog? If so that displays in mega bytes. which will be around 1/8th of the speed in mega bits.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the 80 80mbps (megabits per second) and the 12 is 12MB/s (megabytes per second). Thus you are acheiving the rated speed.
 
I did a thread not too long ago on fast routers, I ended up with an asus unit from PC world.

it was a Asus RT-N66U
 
eeyore said:
I did a thread not too long ago on fast routers, I ended up with an asus unit from PC world.

it was a Asus RT-N66U
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Hope you updated the firmware they have glaring hole in ftp server/ai disk which supplies hackers with your username and password.
 
Tintin124 said:
Hope you updated the firmware they have glaring hole in ftp server/ai disk which supplies hackers with your username and password.
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I think i did as one of my first tasks. Will double check tho!
Cheers for the tip off / making me paranoid for the next 5 hours till i can get to it ;)
 
eeyore said:
I think i did as one of my first tasks. Will double check tho!
Cheers for the tip off / making me paranoid for the next 5 hours till i can get to it ;)
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Love the fact asus took a year to advise users and update their systems. Yes I have an asus and this pure fact makes me not recommend them even though the router is great.
 
Alternatively, run dd-wrt on it :)
 
miker said:
Is the 12 from the windows file transfer dialog? If so that displays in mega bytes. which will be around 1/8th of the speed in mega bits.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the 80 80mbps (megabits per second) and the 12 is 12MB/s (megabytes per second). Thus you are acheiving the rated speed.
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Cant find the exact speed they quote so can tell if its megabits or megabytes however normally transfer speeds are megabits.
 
miker said:
Is the 12 from the windows file transfer dialog? If so that displays in mega bytes. which will be around 1/8th of the speed in mega bits.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the 80 80mbps (megabits per second) and the 12 is 12MB/s (megabytes per second). Thus you are acheiving the rated speed.
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Or alternatively, it is indeed an 80MByte/s device, but connected at 100Mbits (12MBytes/sec ~= 100Mbits/sec). If so, a classic example of cheaper network infrastructure throttling connections....
 
arad85 said:
Or alternatively, it is indeed an 80MByte/s device, but connected at 100Mbits (12MBytes/sec ~= 100Mbits/sec). If so, a classic example of cheaper network infrastructure throttling connections....
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Connected at 1gbps I can assure you. :D

Anyway back onto OP subject. Have you checked why you are getting slow speeds is it signal strength? Lots of co channel interference from neighbours etc?
Your network card? Is N standard in the hub? Is your wifi card N capable?
 
neil_g said:
wireless is pants frankly at large transfers. even works 5ghz multi channel hardcore APs are much much slower than a gig cable.
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Going to leave my network out of this as not concerned as it works as should.

Yes cable is faster and will be until we see full duplex wireless. Though wireless can handle large transfers just wont get lan speed. Your throughput is half the connected speed in a perfect environment. Eg connected at 54mbps your throughput will be half around 20mbps due to overheads and half duplex nature.
 
Tintin124 said:
Connected at 1gbps I can assure you. :D
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OK, but I would be seriously looking at why I only get 12Mbytes/sec to the NAS..... I can get more than that off really old PC hardware with IDE laptop drives....
 
neil_g said:
ive seen those sort of connectors before, horribly flaky connection some of them.
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These are rock solid, this is one of my business customers (I do home & business computer support for a living) he designed them. They've sold thousands to sky & BT. They do 10/100 ones that use just 2 pairs, or the newer GB ones that use all 4
 
fair enough, but ive seen a lot of those plastic press in things in telephone and network extensions and they invariably stop working sooner or later. much sooner if the cable gets moved about a lot.
 
arad85 said:
OK, but I would be seriously looking at why I only get 12Mbytes/sec to the NAS..... I can get more than that off really old PC hardware with IDE laptop drives....
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I would advise you to look at specs of a dns323 and you might see why ;)
 
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