Charts: NAS Features - eSATA ports, OS, Motherboard

[truerock]

Dear Mr. Higgins,

I find the SmallNetBuilder web site to be extremely well designed and an excellent source of high quality information.

I would like to suggest that the following be added to the features tracked in the "charts" for NAS devices:

1. Number of eSATA ports
2. Operating System
3. Motherboard manufacturer and model

Best Regards,
TrueRock
Houston, Texas, USA

 

[thiggins]

I would like to suggest that the following be added to the features tracked in the "charts" for NAS devices:

1. Number of eSATA ports
2. Operating System
3. Motherboard manufacturer and model

eSATA ports are currently documented in the NAS Chart Feature table in the "Other Features" section. But I agree that they should have their own category and make it a new filter so that eSATA-equipped products can be more easily found.

OS information isn't readily available for most products. Most NASes use a custom Linux distro.

Motherboards are custom and not separately purchasaable. But the current charts include Processor and memory information.

 

[branon]

Another Feature

I think it would really help to compare transfer rates over wifi connections. That would be very helpful to endusers.

 

[thiggins]

I think it would really help to compare transfer rates over wifi connections. That would be very helpful to endusers.

In most cases, that would be a meaningless measure of NAS performance.
An 802.11g wireless connection provides best case around 3 MB/s of throughput and a draft 11n typically under 7 MB/s.

Even the slowest NASes now typically have better than 12 MB/s performance. So the wireless connection would be the limit on performance.

 

[branon]

more on wifi and nas

In most cases, that would be a meaningless measure of NAS performance.
An 802.11g wireless connection provides best case around 3 MB/s of throughput and a draft 11n typically under 7 MB/s.

Even the slowest NASes now typically have better than 12 MB/s performance. So the wireless connection would be the limit on performance.

Thank you for this answer. As you can guess I am a novice at this stuff.
So, judging from your answer, would it be safe to assume that given the constraint from the router, I really should not care about these throughput rankings that you have on your website?
To put it differently, would all these NAS devices (Linkstation, Linksys media, WD My Book, etc) provide more or less the same speeds with a wifi connection?
(In which case the choice of choosing between one of them is simply a matter of features, durability, and price and not performance).

Many Thanks

 

[thiggins]

To put it differently, would all these NAS devices (Linkstation, Linksys media, WD My Book, etc) provide more or less the same speeds with a wifi connection?

Yes. That is correct.