General Functionality of RT-N16

[bsod]

I have for a while now trying to use my RT-N16 as a Torrent client and media server/samba server.

I have tried Tomato shibby, Asuswrt Merlin and stock firmware, but non give me any kind of reliability.

I have tried two Powered USB 2.0 Drives, a flash drive. I have tried with and without swap partitions/files, but I always get the same problems;

Tomato Shibby:

• On file transfer/media streaming, after a while sometimes the bandwidth between client and router is dramatically reduced. Normally transfers are between 4-6mbps but when this happens, is reduced to 800kbps.

• Not as often as on Asus WRTMerlin, but if using transmission, the router eventually resets itself. CPU usage isn't high, memory isn't high and swap makes no difference. It just reboots once in a while, more commonly when doing a fast transfer.

Asus WRTMerlin:

• Using transmission through optware or entware consistently causes reboots of the router. A swap file helps a bit, but it happens very often. rtorrent causes the same. Using a swap helps a little, but it still reboots.

Stock:

• Admit-ably I haven't used stock as much as the others, but it seems to be the most stable by far. The worse I have seen is it loses my internet connection link if under load. With lots of torrents it often locks up and freezes and it takes a few hours for the UI to be usable again.

With custom firmware and without an external HDD attached the router is a lot more reliable, but is still prone to the occasional internet or wifi disconnect..sometimes even a reboot. With stock I had the router running for 10 days without a hitch. This of course without any of the features enabled.

I have tried looking at the logs and sometimes I do receive USB I/O "dead device" HDD errors. It doesn't matter which drive I use, I always get these errors even though the drives ive tested are working perfectly fine on my computers. I have tried changing the drives max sectors too 128 in a startup script as I read that solved the USB errors for some, it seems to help with the errors, but the router still reboots itself or has a problem with transfer speed after a while. I have tried enabling USB 1 support because I was having a problem where the disk would just disappear showing as nothing connected.. which again seems to help, but the problems of transfer and reboots still exist.

I'm just not sure what to do now. Am I expecting too much for it to work flawlessly with these features? Should I buy a NAS and keep the router..or should I exchange for another on the basis its faulty?

I'm not a heavy user and only one person uses these features at once. It has just been a complete nightmare and I'd be interested to see if any other RT-N16 users are having the same problems.

Thanks for any help!

 

[moonman]

I would expect this kind of behavior when you have so much going on this poor little thing. I had N16 which would lock up occasionally so I had to downclock it to 400MHz to solve problems with it. Get a serial connected to it and wait till it crashes to see the log.

But if I were you, I would get a NAS. Or better yet get something like Pogoplug or GoFlex HOME (plenty on ebay without drive for around 35 bucks) and install ArchLinux ARM on it. It will make a perfect NAS with transmission, flexget, samba, and whatever else you like. It maxes out my internet connection at 3MB/s with transmission and read/wrtie speeds are around 30MB/s. For 35 bucks it is a better solution than torturing your router.

 

[hpp8140]

Are you using optware? My RT-N16 with optware running minidlna, trans, pyload was working reliably for 2 years until recently...not sure what changed...I think curl libraries.

I have moved on to a pogoplug E02 running debian, I would have done this long ago if I realized the stock pogoplug firmware could be replaced. It is fast and stable. Samba speeds 25-30 MB/s with quick 40+ MB/s bursts

 

[bsod]

Thanks guys for your help. Sorry it took so long to reply. I thought I had email notifications enabled, apparently not!

I only purchased the router a few months ago, so I can't vouch for any previous reliability. All I know now is the router is an issue if I ask it to run transmission or file transfers. All I can think is there is a fault with the CPU or memory since it seems to reboot when it isn't being tasked. Its the same when running optware or entware. Although I would say entware is slightly more reliable.

I could try the serial method, but looking online that would involve delving inside the router and connecting up the cable. That's without reading the output separately or any complications attached to that. How easy is it and how much does it cost? Also, I am still within warranty, perhaps I should ask Amazon to replace it? I may get lucky and get a refund to spend on a different router that perhaps would perform better? I am in the UK and within a year, that usually means the retailer are obliged to at least replace an electrical item.

I just need basic usage, nothing heavy at all.My device at maximum would be downloading torrents whilst streaming to my television. Only one user. So these devices mentioned do sound attractive. What puts me off though is the processing power. Is it an issue having such slow CPU's running these small boxes? Does that lead to slow transfer speeds and hiccups when streaming media?

I want to be able to stream in high bitrate wirelessly, but not necessarily transcoding. I don't need a fully fledged setup like xbmc or plex. Just simply a way to copy files too and from and a basic dlna server that works with my TV!

The devices you mentioned, how do they compare to something like a Rasperry PI? I was thinking of picking up one of those and running my own distro...I also thought about using old hardware as a server, cheaper, but that is a much more bulkier option.

 

[moonman]

RaspberryPI has been discussed before and sucks for almost anything unless
1. You want it for XBMC
2. You want it for messing around with GPIOs and such

It only has 1 bus which is USB and all the devices share this same 30MB/s MAX bus including the built-in NIC (B model) and the 2 available ports. It will be terrible as a file server. CPU is slower (not considering anything that requires FPU) compared to pogoplug e02 or goflex.

Pogo/Goflex gives you 1.2 GHz CPU which is quicker that that or rpi, 1Gbit network. Goflex will not be limited to 30MB/s transfer rate if sata hdd is connected.

Now, it is the matter of preference of course, but I'll say why I prefer ArchLinux (of course being part of ArchLinux ARM team my opinion will be somewhat biased

1. Always up to date - as soon as developer puts out a release for a package it will be in repos shortly. You don't need to wait months or even years for a new version to appear
2. Rolling release - Install it once and just do updates. No need to reinstall when a new release comes out (i.e. Ubuntu 13.4 to 13.9) because there is no releases, as I said it is always up to date.
3.Easy package system. If something is not available in the repos you can easily build it your self or somebody might have done it already in Arch User Repository (AUR)
4. Almost every package has a wiki page (ArchWiki) describing how to install, start and set it up.

 

[bsod]

Thanks for the info. Ill look into buying one of these devices and running archlinux on it.