RT-AC87R (U) vs. Netgear Nighthawk X4 AC2350

[Shonk]

I can pull 105 MiB sustained from a 1.6 Ghz single core arm5te over SMB
and 112 MiB sustained PC to PC

you maybe need an upgrade somewhere on your lan

The bottleneck here that makes me doubt it is the network, not the CPU power. With the SMB overhead, having 90 MB/s over a gigabit network sound unlikely to me.

EDIT: their announced write speed also seem low - they are lower than what I can get on an RT-AC87 right now (before the new SDK). That's probably in part due to the Tuxera driver Asus now uses, while I suspect Netgear are still using Paragon.

 

[hggomes]

We are talking about USB transfers over LAN, not LAN to LAN.

 

[dfran1]

Just to clarify something and I am talking about the USB3.0 ports on both asus and netgear.

unless I have a really good USB 3.0 drive and interface (or all in one combo) I most likely will never see those posted top end speeds on either asus or netgear anyway?

Is that a correct statement?

on the netgear is that esata port hot swappable like usb with eject?

 

[hggomes]

Yes, not every hdd is able to reach >100mb/s, the best method is use a SSD with the enclosure to get the maximum transfer rate or you can test the HDD maximum transfer rate on a PC and compare the results with the router.

It works the same way using eSATA, you can eject it like a USB drive.

 

[RMerlin]

Not sure whee you got that number from. But when doing backups at work we transfer with 100MB/s sustained throughput to our samba shares on a ZFS storage appliance via 1Gbe.

Since I was curious about the R7500 I downloaded the netgear GPL release and it is extremely surprising, it is based on openwrt and comes with gpl code for quantenna and includes atheros drivers.

That would be a change. The R7000 and R8000 GPL code was based on reference Broadcom HND code, re-developed/maintained by Foxconn, but then these were both Broadcom devices, and Netgear doesn't use a unified codebase accross multiple platforms.

 

[hggomes]

Not sure whee you got that number from. But when doing backups at work we transfer with 100MB/s sustained throughput to our samba shares on a ZFS storage appliance via 1Gbe.

Since I was curious about the R7500 I downloaded the netgear GPL release and it is extremely surprising, it is based on openwrt and comes with gpl code for quantenna and includes atheros drivers.

That makes this unit the non plus ultra now. If there is a chance to get official openwrt support, very likely to have dd-wrt support, maybe tomato ...

It has the eSata support and a 1.4Ghz CPU. This is definitely a asus killer. It got everything asus has but better.

It seems also that kernel version used on R7500 X4 is 3.4.0 instead of old 2.6.36 used on AC87U.

 

[RMerlin]

I can pull 105 MiB sustained from a 1.6 Ghz single core arm5te over SMB
and 112 MiB sustained PC to PC

you maybe need an upgrade somewhere on your lan

What version is the samba server?

Most routers run a very old version of Samba, which only supports the old SMB1 protocol, with its 64 KB block size limitation. This adds a lot of overhead To get any kind of worthwhile improvements, you need something modern enough to support SMB2 or SMB3. That's why I mentioned NFS in my original post.

You're not getting 112 MB/s of file throughput using SMB1. You're either on a newer version of the SMB protocol, or you are measuring network throughput instead of file throughput. The latter takes into account the protocol overhead.

 

[hggomes]

It's not only SMB that can be used here, you can use FTP server also to measure transfers on the router via USB 3.0 port.

Instead using SMB use FTP Server

 

[dfran1]

It seems also that kernel version used on R7500 X4 is 3.4.0 instead of old 2.6.36 used on AC87U.

I don't know much about this technical stuff but if netgear is using the new kernel then will asus use it? and if so when do you all think they will?

 

[RMerlin]

I don't know much about this technical stuff but if netgear is using the new kernel then will asus use it? and if so when do you all think they will?

Asus's main environment is based on Broadcom, while Netgear's is based on Qualcomm. Both use different kernels in their respective SDKs.

 

[Shonk]

root@Nas:~# uname -a

Linux Nas 3.3.4-88f6281 #1 Tue Jul 9 14:48:53 JST 2013 armv5tel unknown

root@Nas:~# cat /proc/version
Linux version 3.3.4-88f6281 (root@build2.dd-hot24.nas.buffalo.local) (gcc version 4.2.0 20070413 (prerelease)) #1 Tue Jul 9 14:48:53 JST 2013

root@Nas:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : Feroceon 88FR131 rev 1 (v5l)
BogoMIPS : 1594.16
Features : swp half thumb fastmult edsp
CPU implementer : 0x56
CPU architecture: 5TE
CPU variant : 0x2
CPU part : 0x131
CPU revision : 1
Hardware : Feroceon-KW
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000

root@Nas:~# smbd -V
Version 3.6.3-31a.osstech

112 MiB actual file throughput win7 - win7
105 MiB actual file throughput 1.6ghz arm5te - win7

What version is the samba server?

Most routers run a very old version of Samba, which only supports the old SMB1 protocol, with its 64 KB block size limitation. This adds a lot of overhead To get any kind of worthwhile improvements, you need something modern enough to support SMB2 or SMB3. That's why I mentioned NFS in my original post.

You're not getting 112 MB/s of file throughput using SMB1. You're either on a newer version of the SMB protocol, or you are measuring network throughput instead of file throughput. The latter takes into account the protocol overhead.

 

[RMerlin]

Samba 3.6 is much newer than the 3.0 version used by most routers, and it does indeed support SMB2, unlike those older versions.

 

[dfran1]

It looks like CNET review is up and it doesn't look good for Netgear

http://www.cnet.com/products/netgear-nighthawk-x4-ac2350-smart-wifi-r7500-router/

 

[RMerlin]

It looks like CNET review is up and it doesn't look good for Netgear

http://www.cnet.com/products/netgear-nighthawk-x4-ac2350-smart-wifi-r7500-router/

I'm surprised at the mention that the webui would be sluggish, considering the CPU they use. Unless they were mostly referring to the fact the router needs to completely reboot for most setting changes.

CNet's NAS tests also seem to support what I suspected: that thing isn't getting anywhere the advertised file performance over SMB. It's even below the RT-AC87U performance that both myself and Tim experienced (don't use the numbers CNet posted for the AC87U, they forgot to disable USB 3.0 Interference in their tests, which forced the AC87U to run at USB 2.0 speed).

 

[rawbar]

Was hoping to see a comparison of routing and wifi features when I saw the title. I would have thought the storage feature would be a who cares bell and whistle for most. My draytek died so looking for comparisons between the latest and greatest.

 

[dfran1]

I'm surprised at the mention that the webui would be sluggish, considering the CPU they use. Unless they were mostly referring to the fact the router needs to completely reboot for most setting changes.

CNet's NAS tests also seem to support what I suspected: that thing isn't getting anywhere the advertised file performance over SMB. It's even below the RT-AC87U performance that both myself and Tim experienced (don't use the numbers CNet posted for the AC87U, they forgot to disable USB 3.0 Interference in their tests, which forced the AC87U to run at USB 2.0 speed).

I did some tests on read speeds today and turned off the usb interference
30MBs on usb 2
50MBs on usb 3
copying the same 12 gig file to a windows 7 ult 64 bit pc (in parallels on a mac)

 

[RMerlin]

I did some tests on read speeds today and turned off the usb interference
30MBs on usb 2
50MBs on usb 3
copying the same 12 gig file to a windows 7 ult 64 bit pc (in parallels on a mac)

Could have been Parallel's virtualization or something else slowing things down. See my own test results here.

 

[dfran1]

something is up with my mac, i'll have to investigate

 

[dfran1]

Could have been Parallel's virtualization or something else slowing things down. See my own test results here.

all read speeds

I ran windows 7 ult 64 bit in boot camp and see a spike at 70 in the beginning but toward the middle it goes to 63 sometimes hits 65

but my mac will only get 40 , 41 what gives, I tried to search and can't find anything so far, I don't get it? I even tried to copy to a spare SSD in my USB 3.0 attached to the mac pro , same results 40?

I tried a ssd in a usb 3.0 attached to my mac pro, and got 110-120 no problem , so this is usb with a ssd to my internal ssd in a mac pro.

 

[Kristy34C]

Was hoping to see a comparison of routing and wifi features when I saw the title. I would have thought the storage feature would be a who cares bell and whistle for most. My draytek died so looking for comparisons between the latest and greatest.

I Agree with you.. this thread is completely off Topic.. so I will try to answer your question as I am running both Routers Right now

**Advantages of Netgear R7500 over Asus RT-AC87 **

I have a slow DSL in my location 5Mbps/890Kbps - before enabling the QOS Feature - browsing was fine.. but watching Youtube or Netflix videos caused "loading" or pauses... Netgear QOS is *very* intelligent it not only looks at the device (TV, DVR PC Etc) but the protocol etc... after enabling it we have had no problems viewing video etc...

There are two internal hardware aspects in which the R7500 differs from the Asus RT-AC87:

1) Platform SoC (Qualcomm Internet Processor IPQ8064 instead of the Broadcom BCM4709A) 2) Interface between the 5 GHz radios and the platform SoC (PCIe instead of RGMII)

so technically the Netgear Radio's can go beyond the 1GB in each direction there also have offload processors running at 500mhz so the main Soc can devote CPU for stuff like VPN, Storage etc. - whereas the Asus is "limited" and can't get beyond the 1GB due to it's interface.. also more USB 3.0 ports etc.

as an end user - I don't care about Tomato or "DD-WRT" or third party firmware - so this has no weight in my decision (i know some in this forum don't like Netgear due to this etc)

so "hardware" wise Netgear is the clear winner.. (they just have firmware issues)

***Advantages of RT-AC87 over Netgear R7500 ***

Asus guys like JJ Gary etc have been very "pro active" providing us with firmware updates every 2 weeks or so for the Router and I like the ASUS DIY website - whereas with Netgear "I have no idea" when Firmware will ever be released ... the only contact like this with Netgear is through the "Newegg website reviews (if you post a review with an unresolved issue... they will ask you to forward the tech case# to a special email address to actually get it resolved - as phone support tends to be useless)

Asus has actually announced a 4x4 MU-Mimo client adapter & the best idea would be to match it to the 87U -vs- the netgear..

in terms of WIFI Performance...

my laptop is running an Intel AC7260 (with a custom Gigabyte P34v2 Laptop with three internal antenna's pulled into the two ports of the wifi card being 2x2 - I am hoping for a future 3x3 internal adapter being released)

my distance tests clearly the Asus comes out with a stronger signal & faster throughput ... for Now... I am NOT Sure if this is a result of "antenna design" or just better firmware..

so Asus is the "winner" for me right now... my Concern is the limited hardware on the Asus & if Netgear gets it act together with firmware you might see faster overall throughput & speeds that Asus won't be able to match - also if Netgear announce a 4x4 MU-MIMO Client adapter that would be a big plus

I am probably also the only person on earth that likes the Netgear interface better then Asus ...