[TESTING] File transfers (Samba/FTP/NFS) from USB drive to client intermittently fail

[Yota]

Have you been able to recreate this problem? ***

I've never seen the out-of-memory errors that @Tech9 describes. Notwithstanding my original post, I've also tried to recreate his failure scenario on numerous occasions by copying nearly 500GB of files (including 10's of thousands of small files) back and forth between a USB HDD and it never failed once.

Given that in the 10 months since I posted this thread not a single person replied, let alone attempted to verify my observations I could only conclude that the problem was an extremely rare edge case and/or it was fixed in a subsequent firmware update. Indeed there are multiple posts from people that are regularly transferring large volumes of data to their router's HDD without issue.

*** There are numerous reasons why network file transfers might fail. It would be a mistake to lump them all together as a single problem.

Not yet, because the information provided by everyone in this thread so far is not enough to reproduce the problem, I don't know what kind of sample file I should create to trigger the problem.

Blind feedback is meaningless if the error cannot be reproduced.

 

[Tech9]

No issue then. User error. Not sure why it happens with Asus routers only. Closed source.

 

[GHammer]

Is it possible to report this issue to Asus? Because NAS is a marketing gimmick, and nowadays that gimmick doesn't work anymore, it's their responsibility to fix it, right?

Well, I'm not sure of marketing. You have to dig into specs to find mention of USB abilities for the AX86 series.

RT-AX86 Series(RT-AX86U/RT-AX86S)

ASUS gaming routers provide the very best gaming experience, with an arsenal of features and tools designed to improve online gaming performance and give you the competitive edge you need to win.

www.asus.com

It's an afterthought, if it works cool. If it doesn't, move along.

 

[doomdog]

Sorry for reviving this, but there aren't that many USB storage related posts.

Just to add some data from my n=1 experiment:
- AXE11000, Merlin 3004.388.4
- one laptop with AX210 connected on 6GHz, link speed 2401/2401. NVMe inside
- another laptop with AX200 connected on 5GHz, link speed 2401/2401. NVMe inside
- wired 1 Gbit SBC
- NTFS formatted SSD connected to the router, USB3.0, shared over Samba

A few tests, just to set some baseline and to sanity-check:
- laptop to laptop iperf3: close to 1400 Mbps both directions (Of course with a bit of positioning and without any other devices on the air during the test)
- (any) laptop to SBC iperf3: ~930 Mbps both directions
- SBC to router iperf3: ~930 Mbps both directions
So far, so good, right?
Now let's try something:
- (any) laptop to router iperf3: around 900 Mbps download and, wait for it... around 450 Mbps upload!
OK, we are not supposed to hit the router directly, yeah yeah yeah, it's a router not a node and so on. OK.
BUT WHY is it capable of saturating gigabit wire (as in the SBC case above)?

Nevermind, let's go on to the USB part:
- on the router with dd: ~400 MB/s read/write
So, USB and NTFS not a bottleneck. Good.
- SBC to Samba share: ~115 MB/s both directions
As expected, right? As an aside, I've hammered the SSD quite a bit: 1 core to 100%, no out of memory, no crashes, constant ~100MB/s for hours.
- As I have no wired 2.5 Gbit device yet and no reason not to trust Dong's results, I'll add his here: ~149/139 MB/s down/up
Now:
- (any) laptop to Samba share: ~111 MB/s download, ~50 MB/s upload!
Same speeds as iperf3 earlier. Maybe not able to reach the Samba overhead speeds from Dong's, but at least we should come closer and definitely over 1Gbit. And look at that upload!

So, conclusion(s):
Any type of communication over wireless, where the router itself is one end of the connection, is crippled somehow (substantially more) TO the router.
The same communication over wires, where the router itself is one end of the connection, is happening at the expected speeds.
There is no problem with the USB storage subsystem per se. It is stable and fast, with the exception of wireless TO the router, as revealed by the tests.
The poor performance of USB (only on wireless) seems to be a simple consequence of an underlying problem with how the router handles connections to and from itself on the wireless interface.

How come upload to the router over a Gbit port is at link speed and over wireless (which is demonstrably capable of 1400Mbps) is only 450-500 Mbps? The only difference is in the inbound interfaces (apart from different medium ofc), and those even share the same br0 bridge internally..

So there. Something for the true connoisseurs to delve into and try to decipher.

 

[glens]

Off-topic, but I've mentioned on the forum several times that the router as a (target) endpoint can only do half speed wireless throughput. It'd be nice were that not the case, agreed, but it's not a show-stopper to me.