Thinking of setting up a NAS. Need some inputs. **Network Noob Alert**

Vasishta.Sushant

Vasishta.Sushant

Skilled
I have this Belkin N600 Dual Band Router with me and I can hookup an external HDD, to create a make do setup. The trouble is that I barely get 2MBps transfer speeds on my phone/tablet.
(Strangely I get better speeds when I do homegroup data transfer between my Windows 8 machines. )

Now I need the data access to my android devices as well and require better streaming rate.

I don't want to spend much so looking for another usable alternative. On another thought, if I setup a NAS, it'd remain ON 24/7/365. Some of my crucial data might end up being on that so reliability would be of prime importance (after performance). In that case, I'd be comfortable spending reasonably more. Size is another constraint and I don't want big/clunky box.

Looks like I need to get the likes of WD Red Drives and some kind of NAS box.

Fill me up with some recommendations brothers. Also I can source stuff from the US, if there is price/choice advantage.

To sum it up all, I need NAS setup which is:
1) Cost Effective
2) Reliable
3) Small size
4) Add On like FTP access/web access would be appreciable but not necessarily a requirement.
 
Vasishta.Sushant said:
I have this Belkin N600 Dual Band Router with me and I can hookup an external HDD, to create a make do setup. The trouble is that I barely get 2MBps transfer speeds on my phone/tablet.
(Strangely I get better speeds when I do homegroup data transfer between my Windows 8 machines. )

Now I need the data access to my android devices as well and require better streaming rate.
Click to expand...
2MBs is 16Mbs which is a low average for a N150 device like your android devices.

You cannot speed that up unless you have, how should i put this, more high end android devices.

When you say you get better transfer rates with windows 8 is that by wifi as well ? if so then your windows laptop has a N300 wifi card which means twice as fast.

What are you trying to do with the android devices ? there might be some tweaks possible here.

Vasishta.Sushant said:
I don't want to spend much so looking for another usable alternative. On another thought, if I setup a NAS, it'd remain ON 24/7/365. Some of my crucial data might end up being on that so reliability would be of prime importance (after performance). In that case, I'd be comfortable spending reasonably more. Size is another constraint and I don't want big/clunky box.

Looks like I need to get the likes of WD Red Drives and some kind of NAS box.

Fill me up with some recommendations brothers. Also I can source stuff from the US, if there is price/choice advantage.

To sum it up all, I need NAS setup which is:
1) Cost Effective
2) Reliable
3) Small size
4) Add On like FTP access/web access would be appreciable but not necessarily a requirement.
Click to expand...
This is a seperate issue.
 
blr_p said:
2MBs is 16Mbs which is a low average for a N150 device like your android devices.

You cannot speed that up unless you have, how should i put this, more high end android devices.

When you say you get better transfer rates with windows 8 is that by wifi as well ? if so then your windows laptop has a N300 wifi card which means twice as fast.

What are you trying to do with the android devices ? there might be some tweaks possible here.
Click to expand...

Its not due to the device's max supported speed. I own the NOTE-2 which is quite capable and even with that I get less speeds. Something to do with the router I guess.

Really don't need anything more than having the ability to stream HD videos from the storage to my devices.

blr_p said:
This is a seperate issue.
Click to expand...

Still any suggestions ?
 
Vasishta.Sushant said:
Its not due to the device's max supported speed. I own the NOTE-2 which is quite capable and even with that I get less speeds. Something to do with the router I guess.

Really don't need anything more than having the ability to stream HD videos from the storage to my devices.
Click to expand...
I have the note 800 and get ~20Mbs so not much more. At 5Ghz it goes to ~40Mbs but the range is shorter.

How far away are you from the router ? number of walls ? how thick are they ?

What is the model #/rev version of your belkin router ?

How are you streaming your HD videos ? Any DLNA involved or windows sharing.

Want to see if its possible to fix your streaming thing first. NAS can come after.
 
Vasishta.Sushant said:
I barely get 2MBps transfer speeds on my phone/tablet.
Click to expand...

What do you get from the disk to a desktop PC?

Just for comparo - here's a set of transfers showing transfer speeds in my setup.

Untitled.png


The setup is: A 1.5TB disk in a USB3.0 case, connected to my Netgear WNDR3700. One wired PC and one wireless PC. Wired on Gigabit, wireless on an Intel 6230 mounted on a mPCIe - PCIe converter card with one 5GHz antenna and one PCB antenna - so getting about 70% of total available power output from the card.

As you can probably tell, the quickest speed is only available to the wired client ('Share' folder). The slowest is transferring from the 'NAS' ('Applications and Gaming' folder) to the wireless client ('Dumper' folder), and the one in between is transferring from wired client to wireless client. Also, when my disk was formatted in NTFS I was getting about a third of these speeds. The router recommended a format to EXT3 for best speeds and I grumbled a bit but I guess was worth it.

The few times I've tried mobile transfers, I've never managed more than 2MB/s (even from the wired server) and I would recommend you think about whether spending money will actually get you any increment in speed. This is not actually noticeable for consumption of all bu the heaviest content, FWIW.
 
Thanks @cranky. That format change thing looks pretty strange though.

Well, I am looking primarily at the wireless speed since I want to keep the router and the NAS (or whatever) in one corner of my house and not be bothered about it. The cheapest solution I see it is trying to hook a 1TB hard disk (odd4.5K) to the Belkin Router, after formatting in EXT3.

(another follow up question: Would windows detect the EXT3 partitioned drive, if I connect the drive via USB ?)
 
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Not natively, but there are free utilities that allow windows to mount ext3 partitions.

Also, check the router manual to see if ext3 will give you a speed boost at all. Mine said it would and it did.
 
Budget? The best i can recommend is a Seagate Go Flex Home/Net, attach a SATA drive of your choice to it.

Running the same, getting about 50MBps on wired via a Gigabit switch. Wireless is about 10MBps 5MBps - Rechecked, and could not get more than 6MBps peaks. Averaged out at about ~5.5MBps. This was the max I got within 10 ft of the router, 30 ft away I was getting 2.5MBps. These are read speeds only, write speeds on wired come to 30MBps, while I have not checked WiFi write speeds.

I will check the streaming speeds and update you on that. @Vasishta.Sushant
 
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An EXT3 formatted drive is going to provide a marginal improvement in streaming movies compared to NTFS.

The issue is network file system throughput not local file system.

As yet we know nothing about TS wifi/playback setup.
 
My router doesn't offer me gigabit wired connection and its only the normal ethernet one. Also I am only looking at wireless performance.

Would it matter if I hook something like Segate GoFlex home via ethernet port, to my router? I'd honestly be happy if I get like 10MBps on wireless. Would serve me good.
 
blr_p said:
The issue is network file system throughput not local file system.
Click to expand...

Since we have too many unknowns, as per your words, this statement also reaches a conclusion too soon and dismisses a possible solution?

The client may be at its limits in terms of network throughput and we don't yet know how much speed we get on other wireless clients yet.

However, there is a severe limitation on software resources within the router that are devoted to disk access and performance loss incurred by the Linux kernel reading from NTFS drives can be significant. Think about it, when using a software solution to mount a linux partition on windows you lose about 50% throughput on a modern x86 pc. Imagine what happens on a small 200MHz router CPU that has to handle every single operation on its own.

In any case I think the speed and throughput conclusions cannot be reached without working out the network issues, disk throughput is an issue that also bears thinking about.
 
Vasishta.Sushant said:
Also I am only looking at wireless performance.
Click to expand...
Let's try this again....

How far away are your wifi clients from the router ? number of walls ? how thick are they ?

What is the model #/rev version of your belkin router ?

How are you streaming your HD videos ? Any DLNA involved or windows sharing.

What is the filesize of HD videos you are trying to stream and their duration.

Vasishta.Sushant said:
I'd honestly be happy if I get like 10MBps on wireless. Would serve me good.
Click to expand...
10MBs as in 80Mbs ? With a mobile ? Not possible with existing n wireless, maybe possible with AC.

I know what you're thinking, 150 Mbs so should at least be able to get 80 Mbs. Does not work that way. Those are raw speeds, once protocol + encryption overhead + channel width + transmission loss is accounted for the real throughput is much lower.

NAS has little to do with improving your speeds here. Its a seperate issue.

Suggest you explore whether its possible to solve your primary concern before getting into secondaries.
 
@cranky @blr_p
You guys got me confused even more.

Lets me reiterate the problem again.
* Belkin N600 (V1), sitting in my next room, with a USB pen drive attached to it. I want to transfer stuff from that drive to my Note 2 (and vice versa), at speed greater tan 2MBps.
* Help me with any possible tweaking that is required at my end. Otherwise help me identify the alternate cheapest and smallest option.
 
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When you say transfer stuff what do you mean ?

Copy files over to the mobile or stream them to the mobile from the pen drive. This would be reading from the pen drive.

Going in the other direction, mobile->pen drive is writing to the pen drive.

I'm talking about reading, cranky's points are more to do with writing.

So which direction is the most common.
 
1. Do you have any other wireless client? A laptop, desktop, anything?

2. Can you tell us what transfer speed you get on that *in the same locations as your Note 2*.

We need to find out where the slowdown is. If it is from the router you will get those speeds on every client. If any client is able to transfer files quicker then the problem is in your Note and there's no tweaking (that I know of) that will fix that.
 
cranky said:
1. Do you have any other wireless client? A laptop, desktop, anything?
Click to expand...
Yes. One laptop and one desktop computer. My router stays in another room where I don't visit much and all my devices are on wireless connection. There is only one wall in between and absolute distance would be less than 15 ft.

cranky said:
2. Can you tell us what transfer speed you get on that *in the same locations as your Note 2*.
Click to expand...
The transfer speeds are in the range of 2MBps. Up and Down. From my PC/Note 2/Tablet.

cranky said:
We need to find out where the slowdown is. If it is from the router you will get those speeds on every client. If any client is able to transfer files quicker then the problem is in your Note and there's no tweaking (that I know of) that will fix that.
Click to expand...
Also would want to mention that the router uses that twonky media server to stream stuff. The emulation as a network drive is done via a USB driver and only after installing that I am able to write to the router. Without that I can only use the router for streaming only. (written in weird way, I hope that is making some sense :p)
 
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