Modem/Router speed question

Sharpedge

Sharpedge

Sharpedge

Associate
Joined
16 Sep 2008
Posts
145
Location
UK
Have I just fallen foul of advertising? I have dual gigabit ports on my MB, one of which is connected to my modem router - Netgear 3300. Now the modem router has 4 x 100BASE-TX ports on the back (100Mbps). This is the bit where it all falls down. The dual band wifi is reported to run up to 300Mbps, if the lan is only running at a max of 100 I will never see the top end of the wifi speed.

I always thought that the lan cable was going to be faster than wifi. If the statement above is correct then I would expect to see faster speeds if I used a dual band USB adapter between the PC and the modem router. Theoretical max of usb2 is about 480 which is more than enough for the 300 cap on the wifi.

Am I correct of am I missing something fundamental here?
 
What is the networking scenario?

  • DGND3300 modem/router and one PC connected to it.
    - Connection type and rate is largely irrelevant as you are limited by the DSL sync.
  • PC (wired) and laptop (wireless N).
    - In the Up to 270 Mbps modes the throughput may still be limited by the wireless device, depending upon the signal quality. If we assume good signal then transfers between them will be limited by the 100 Mbps ethernet.
  • laptop 1 and laptop 2 (both wireless N)
    - Two wireless 'N' devices at 300 Mbps are going to have to share the bandwidth and in all likelihood you will be lucky to get 100 Mbps throughput between them.
In summary, the wired connections are probably faster.
 
This all stems from putting a 3 yr old hard drive into the back of the router via USB. The transfer speed is appalling and I was looking for some way of improving it. I was about to copy all my music and pics over to the networked drive and did not have the patience to wait the reported 3 hours it was going to take. I connected the drive via ESATA and did the move within 10 min.

The main PC is connected to the modem router via an Ethernet cable. There is a second computer connected over the G spectrum of the router with an occasional work laptop using the same G connection. I am not using N+ yet as I don't have a media centre.

Is the bottleneck the disk/usb or is it the Ethernet. If I make a change from Ethernet to usb N+ between the main pc and the router will I see improved speeds?

As it stand the network disc works well for music streaming but it takes ages to load large .jpeg and .raw files. This is not a workable solution for me, is there any way I can improve the network speed from/to the HDD
 
Sharpedge said:
I was about to copy all my music and pics over to the networked drive and did not have the patience to wait the reported 3 hours it was going to take.
Click to expand...
What actual transfer rates (read and write) do you get between your PC and the hard drive when it is USB-connected to the modem/router?
 
100mbs lan speed is about 12.5Mb per second transfer rate maximum
USB2 is around 20-35Mb per second, depending on the controller
USB1 is around 1Mb per second
 
if speed is really an issue your going to have to make a small investment,

a gigabit switch + a decent Nas would make a world of difference for you
 
What would I use to test network drive speeds. HD Tune will only pick up drives I have in the PC.

Speed on the network drive is not too much of an issue, I could use it for music and backups. The backups however would take days...
 
HD Tune test read only results with drive connected to PC
USB2 - 33 MB/s (high 33.3 and low 32)
ESATA - 65 MB/s (high - 80MB/s and low 40MB/s)

Disk bench with drive connected to Router via USB
Write file - 0.39MB/s
Read file - 1.72MB/s
All testing was done with the drive in a Newlink docking station. File structure is FAT32 as the router can not use NTFS

Why is there such a drop when the drive is used in the network role? As stated above I should be seeing about 12.5 MB/s
 
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