Want to buy a Router with Hard Drive support

bhargav_me

Reputable
Jul 11, 2014
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4,510
Hello Guys,

I am planning to buy a budget router for my home use which supports external hard drives over wifi. I have a few requirements of this router and am very confused about all the options.

Essential:
1. Simultaneous Dual Bandwidth
2. Access my 1TB hard drive over wifi on PC and MAC, it has 2 partitions (NTFS and HFS+)
3. Access the hard drive data over wifi on my iphone or ipad
4. Access the hard drive data over wifi on my SONY W670 TV (It supports media libraries streamed from my PC)

Optional:
4. Time Machine Backup of my mac to the HFS+ partition over wifi

Will all this requirements be fulfilled by NETGEAR WNDR3400 or please suggest me a better option. I want to spend least possible amount.

And will the 600mbps transmission be enough to access the hard drive on at least 2 devices parallel if i have them on same or different bandwidth. Currently I have a netgear router with speed of 150mbps and i can stream data from my laptop to tv or ipad with little to no glitch but cant stream to both simultaneously.
 
Solution
While I primarily use a gigabit Ethernet, but I also use wireless for streaming multiple different HD video streams from a very large NAS box to mobile devices (mostly iPads and laptops) and the only way that I got results acceptable to me (i.e. nobody complaining -- ever) was to use multiple APs at 2.4 and 5GHz that pretty much use all of the wireless bandwidth available. One advantage to living in the middle of nowhere. Most people have the constraint of other nearby wireless networks.

Low cost solutions are great, but it really depends if they meet your actual requirements or just your budget. If the budget is priority #1 then rethink your plan before buying anything. Plan, vet the plan, then purchase as needed.

The first thing...

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Usable bandwidth is a function of both the router and the clients. The number and capability of the clients can limit the usable bandwidth to others because a low capability client (say wireless G) operating at 54Mbit will use more TIME to transmit the same amount of data as a more capable client. Therefore there is less TIME available for the other client(s). Same with too many clients. The TIME gets sliced too thin to give them all sufficient bandwidth.

A hard disk connected via USB to a router is a compromise at best. The throughput is usually limited by the USB connection, the limited CPU power available in a router, the choice to use WIFI to access the disk, and the choice to use less than optimized formats for the disk. Linux standard formatting (ext3) is most reliable with routers although the manufactures claim support for all sorts of formats.

You can try this solution but don't be surprised if you are less than thrilled with the performance no matter what router you use.
 

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
Agreed, you will get slow performance.

Even if you disallow legacy wireless device connection, you will not get anywhere near 600Mbps. Even the best N600 routers get much closer to 60Mbps wireless throughput. Take a look HERE for example.

Depending on your surrounding interference, which you can check with the old free version of inSSIDer from HERE, your best bet for streaming may be to add an inexpensive second router configured as a wireless access point on a different channel (your old router should work for that use).
 
One more thing: Your requirements (USB connection, dual-band) are in contradiction with "budget router". You're looking at $100+ device, not $40.

Then - the MAC partition on your existing drive most probably will be inaccessible from the router (unless you install custom firmware with appropriate support).

Finally - DLNA (sharing of media files with your TV) is hit-and-miss. Again, look for a router where you can install custom firmware (dd-wrt, openwrt, tomato) so you can experiment with add-on modules.

I think you will be better served by a "budget" router and add-on NAS box (or server).
 

bhargav_me

Reputable
Jul 11, 2014
2
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4,510
@Kanewolf & @RealBeast - Guys i know the drawbacks of this but trust me it is more useful then trying to get videos into multiple devices all the time. And anyways It can be useful for hassle free smaller files consumption.

@Alabalcho : The netgear router I described has both the requirements fulfilled of USB and Dual-Band and it is around 100$ (i never mentioned anything about 40$). And getting an NAS and another router will be kind of overkill as my requirements are more for consumer media streaming rather then server storage.
 

RealBeast

Titan
Moderator
While I primarily use a gigabit Ethernet, but I also use wireless for streaming multiple different HD video streams from a very large NAS box to mobile devices (mostly iPads and laptops) and the only way that I got results acceptable to me (i.e. nobody complaining -- ever) was to use multiple APs at 2.4 and 5GHz that pretty much use all of the wireless bandwidth available. One advantage to living in the middle of nowhere. Most people have the constraint of other nearby wireless networks.

Low cost solutions are great, but it really depends if they meet your actual requirements or just your budget. If the budget is priority #1 then rethink your plan before buying anything. Plan, vet the plan, then purchase as needed.

The first thing to drop is wireless backup, I would use a wire for that purpose.
 
Solution