With the wired connection being half the data rate of the air interface, wouldn't USB 3.0 make more sense? Or is the actual throughput of 802.11ac slower than the actual throughput of USB 2.0?
I doubt in real world use that it's faster than a wired gig connection. I still use wired for most things because the latency in wireless is so annoying!
To be honest, the CPU's used in router products are designed to move IP traffic over RF and Ethernet, there is not a lot of CPU cycles left for NAS functionality. Whether using USB 2.0 or 3.0, the bottleneck will still be CPU so the speed of the port provides no real benefit. In most benchmarks of other companies' products, USB throughout on routers is 10-20 MBps, well under the maximum provided by the USB 2.0 interface.
If you want high speed access to disks over your network, a dedicated NAS is required.
The folks at Buffalo are fond of rolling with custom versions of open-source firmware like DD-WRT, which they then fail to update or support via their website. If you can get them on a fire sale, good for you. Otherwise, there are much better options out there.
You'd think that would be the solution, but in reality the Buffalo projects are unsupported by the DD-WRT community. Sometimes it's because they tend to use Atheros chipsets (which don't get much community attention at all), and sometimes because there just doesn't seem to be a modding community member willing to champion them.
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gcor - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
With the wired connection being half the data rate of the air interface, wouldn't USB 3.0 make more sense? Or is the actual throughput of 802.11ac slower than the actual throughput of USB 2.0?lurker22 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
I doubt in real world use that it's faster than a wired gig connection. I still use wired for most things because the latency in wireless is so annoying!BuffaloBrian - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
To be honest, the CPU's used in router products are designed to move IP traffic over RF and Ethernet, there is not a lot of CPU cycles left for NAS functionality. Whether using USB 2.0 or 3.0, the bottleneck will still be CPU so the speed of the port provides no real benefit. In most benchmarks of other companies' products, USB throughout on routers is 10-20 MBps, well under the maximum provided by the USB 2.0 interface.If you want high speed access to disks over your network, a dedicated NAS is required.
Regards,
Brian
PS - I work for Buffalo
hechacker1 - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
To give an idea of what to expect, my WNDR3700 has a nice 64MB of ram, and a 680MHz atheroes platform.With that, and highly fine tuned (aligned assembly) code, it can barely route around 400-600 Mbits.
At those speeds, the processor is busy with irq storms and unable to schedule traffic with fine enough granularity that it doesn't matter.
To get the full speed, you have to step up to 1GHz+ processors. I think the airports are pretty good in that regard.
tipoo - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Does that mean file transfer between PCs wouldn't be that much faster either?sheh - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
It can go faster. I have a Netgear BCM63281-based router. It reads from USB at 40Mbit over SMB, and close to 50Mbit over FTP.I don't remember the CPU clock right now. It might be 320MHz but I could be wrong.
thetuna - Wednesday, May 16, 2012 - link
10-20 MBps = 80-160 Mbps.Big B for bytes, little b for bits.
LB-ID - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
The folks at Buffalo are fond of rolling with custom versions of open-source firmware like DD-WRT, which they then fail to update or support via their website. If you can get them on a fire sale, good for you. Otherwise, there are much better options out there.Tetracycloide - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
Why not just get DD-WRT direct from the source?LB-ID - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
You'd think that would be the solution, but in reality the Buffalo projects are unsupported by the DD-WRT community. Sometimes it's because they tend to use Atheros chipsets (which don't get much community attention at all), and sometimes because there just doesn't seem to be a modding community member willing to champion them.Rocket321 - Friday, May 18, 2012 - link
My WHR-HP-G300N has seen several firmware updates in the year or so I've had it.