A 24 hour torrent downloader and NAS server !

Just thought I would share this information with all of you folks who are looking for a torrent downloader.

I have been obsessed with power consumption for a little while and have been considering ways to bring down the same in my home. One of the big power drainers was the downloading of movies via torrents. The PC used to be up all night downloading movies using up a full 140 watts with a super fast quad core processor and a graphics card drawing good amount of power while just idling. So I was looking for ways to prevent this.

The second issue I had was with the sharing of data between the multiple devices at home and having too much redundant data across drives for various purposes. The ideal solution was to have a network drive which allows all the devices to talk to the drive over the network. But NFS drives are prohibitively expensive and come with too many caveats. So I wanted something simple and cheap.

So here is one great solution. I purchased the ASUS WL-500g Premium V2 wireless router for Rs 4.5k and this one device does all that I want and consumes less than 10w of power for all the wonderful work it does.

Here is the router :
Newegg.com - ASUS WL-500g Premium V2 IEEE 802.3/3u, IEEE 802.11b/g Multi-Functional Wireless Router with x2 USB Plug-N-Share hard drive function and Print Server Function - Wireless Routers

The hardware chip on this router is a broadcom, which means that you can flash plenty of opensource firmwares onto this and make it into a full fledged linux machine. DD-WRT, Oleg and Tomato were the options for firmware and I choose the Oleg's firmware since it closely resembles the Asus factory firmware and is well extensible. Here is the link for the firmware: ASUS WL-500g custom firmware page

Next step, install "transmission", a torrent client to this linux box. Install the windows agent onto your PC and bingo, you have a torrent downloader running on the router, controllable from the PC. Here is how the PC applicaiton looks like when it connects to "transmission" running on the Asus router:

http://transmission-remote-dotnet.go....9-1.small.png

Im sure you are wondering where the downloaded file is saved ? Now the beauty is that the Asus router has two USB ports. Connect a USB drive to it and the linux OS on the router shares the whole drive on the network as it was a network file system. Works like a charm !

Part two of the project was to make sure that I get a USB device that itself that does not draw too much power. So I opted for a 1.8" hard disk with a external enclosure that consumes 1 watt of power. Gives me space for 60 gigs of download space and also serves as a swap disk for the linux box. The 1.8" disk from a TE vendor (Trek) seems to be the best compromise between pocket size, speed and price.

So folks, project succeeded ! I connect to transmission on the router from my PC, start off a any download (FTP, torrent and HTTP) and switch off the PC. Download happens all night and the electricity meter is hardly running. And I can monitor it using the transmission internal webpage from my mobile phone !!!

Do remember that all this does not change the main job of the router and it still functions as a fantastic wireless router.

And to top it all up, I have connected a 1 terabyte external hard disk to the Asus box. I switch it on when I need to and it gives me a 1TB network disk !

Aah the sweet satisfaction of a job well done...

where can we get this Asus pv2 router in india ?

good piece of info. thx for sharing.

I ordered from KMD and it cost me 4.5k. There is a lower model from Asus with one USB port and lesser memory that will cost you approximately 3k from KMD. Asus is supposed to be selling routers in India, but I could not find any in Bangalore.

You are welcome. And thanks for the reputation points.

What abt Leoxsys LEO-150N-BT Wireless-N Storage Router ? Its newly launched and available for 5K ?

Techtree.com India > News > Hardware > Wireless-N Router with built-in BitTorrent

Meawhile Which lower version of asus router you are talking abt ?

At first glance, this router you mention does not look like it will support open source DD-WRT. Even the Asus routers also come with a download manager like the router you suggest, but these typically have a lot of restrictions and do not scale well as a full fledged linux server does.

Im talking about this lower config Asus router:
Newegg.com - ASUS WL-520gU IEEE 802.3/3u/3x, IEEE 802.11b/g Wireless Router with All-in-One Print Server/ DD-WRT Open Source support - Wireless Routers

And if you already have a NFS server and do not need a USB port, this is even
cheaper :
Newegg.com - ASUS WL-520gC IEEE 802.3/3u, IEEE 802.11b/g 125 HSM Wireless Router / DD-WRT Open Source support - Wireless Routers

And this is the PR release for Asus routers in India. If you can get one, that would be ultimate as it would come with warranty.

ASUS announces the launch of WL-520gU Wireless Router - Supports Seamless Windows Vista Wireless LAN Setup

Hey LEOXSYS LEO-150N-BT router comes with powerful 384MHZ MIPS processor which is enough to do torrent/http/ftp download.

I have read PR of asus in India but looking for asus router but not able to find it.
When I contacted LEOXSYS ,they are giving this LEO-150N-BT router with just Rs.5K and also giving delivery anywhare in India free of cost.

I am planning to buy LEOXSYS LEO-150N-BT router.As compare to ASUS router ,LEO-150N-BT got some extra features like WPS button, 8 Multiple SSIDs and FTP server.

It means I can create diff username/password for FTP server and give read/write/delete permission to each user.

Leoxsys guys said that they can ship this product within 3 days anywhare in India and that to Cash on Delivery(COD) basis.

The WL-500g ($69) is out of stock on NewEgg presently. ETA 09/10/09.
Even at $69, it will prolly cost ~4k + Local shipping via KMD.

A very viable and slimmer alternative to an atom build. Thanks a lot vijayaga for sharing this

The Asus WL-520gU keeps coming up for sale at $30ish in newegg and costs about Rs 2750 via KMD plus local shipping. I ordered this router for a second access point in the house last week as the signal is not reaching the upper floor.

BTW, I also build a Atom setup last month for this purpose and it is lying idle now !!!

But the 520g doesn't have USB ports on it. Pretty useless to me

Of course it does. Comes with one USB port instead of the two on the router I mentioned in the OP.

Newegg.com - ASUS WL-520gU IEEE 802.3/3u/3x, IEEE 802.11b/g Wireless Router with All-in-One Print Server/ DD-WRT Open Source support - Wireless Routers

Can you tell me the cheapest wifi router that will do the job ? I have someone coming from abroad who can bring it for me. Does the ASUS ones have international warranty ?

I'm planning to use a Corsair USB Pen Drive to save the files. Will that do the job ?

Wow..
So configuring it is easy? Or is it hard?

I've had the Asus WL500gP v1 for about 2 years now I think. I too was supremely exited about it but overtime you start to see the flaws. I have used everything from DD-WRT to OLEG (which happens to better for this device than anything else) and this is my experience with it.

1) Wireless range is terrible. Let me re-iterate that. TERRIBLE.
I have seen and used every router from a lowly Netgear WGR614 (which BTW has tremedous range for it's size and price) to the more performance oriented and expensive Linksys StoragLink series, but this one is the absolute worst.

2) Considering it is an embedded solution, you can't expect too much performance out of it. If you are watching a movie that is on a harddrive connected to it, then rewinding and forwrding is not exactly stellar. There is only so much load that the tiny processor can take.

3) Random freezing and configuration loss. Out of the blue, the router will just stop working. You'll have to RESET it and reconfigure the device all over again. The smart thing would be to backup the config so you can get back up on your feet ASAP.

Of course some of these issues might have been corrected in the v2. Not exactly the best solution if you are looking for a robust NAS that can host all your data.