Home Broadband & Home Phone

[ichoudhury84]

Hi Everyone,
Hope you can help me with something.
I want to buy an external hard drive and connect it to the USB port on the side of O2 wireless Box IV (Thomson brand - cant recall model #).
The O2 website says it can support NTFS/FAT32 usb drives however, the Thomson "technicolour" manual can only do FAT32.
So there are 3 main questions I need answering at this stage, plaese:
Is the O2 firmware responsible for allowing NTFS drives in the USB port, as that would be a key consideration for me?
Also, are there any data throughput bandwidth type limitations to the router when transferring data across the router's LAN?
I was using a NAS drive between a ethernet cabled laptop (via the router) and initially data transfer rate was 10MB and then slowed down to 0.7MB/S. Has the router hit a limit of some sort or is it the NAS drive that has slown down and reduced transfer speeds?

Appreciate any advice on what the router is capable of as the data I need to transfer is in the order 100's of GB, but not over the internet only across LAN using the router.

Thanks Everyone!
Istiaque

[npr Level 27: Desk Jockey]

I'm using a Hitachi USB drive (cheapo from tesco's) with the O2 boxIV.
NTFS format works fine.
Transfer speed (IIRC):
Over wireless 3MBps.
USB to PC 30MBPS.
Haven't tried it over ethernet from the router.
The FTP server can be troublesome to get working.

[ichoudhury84]

NPR1 > Thanks for your reply, does it ever time out after transferring several hundred gigabyes (not lack of space) say after an hour?
I guess the wireless speed depends on how good your connection is and whether its 54g 108g or 300g bandwitdth.
I was hoping for something around 10Mb/s speed, have you tried connecting your PC via ethernet and rule out wireless losses?
I have just found out some settings in my LAN card that are specific to Windows7 causing slow transfer speeds (googling Windows7 slow NAS yields a lot!)
1. Click the Start orb, Control Panel -> Programs and features.
2. Click Turn Windows features on or off.
3. Uncheck Remote Differential Compression.

How to Disable TCP AutoTuning and Receive Side Scaling
Open an elevated command prompt with administrator rights.
Type the following commands and press Enter (the second command on RSS is optional):
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled
NET adapter settings
Disable IP v6
Flow Control - Auto
IPv4 Checksum (RxTx)
Jumbo MTU - 1500
Send Off Load (x3) = Disable
NS Off Load = Enable
Speed Duplex = Auto
TCP UDP Checksum (x2) = Disable
Power Management = OFF

[npr Level 27: Desk Jockey]

Never known it to time out.
Wireless connection is excellent at 130 mbps
Just tried it with ethernet for you == 3.5 MBps.
I have Diff compression disabled.
Auto Tuning is best left enabled IMO.
Looks as though 3.5MBps is the best the routers USB port can manage.

[ichoudhury84]

Wow 3.5Mb is the best via the USB port in the router?
Surely this is a bit problematic, especially when that device connects to your PC at 30Mb (so its not the drive).
O2 - any answers regarding the slow USB speed of the port for file sharing? Or has it been optimised for just printer sharing?
Thanks.

[npr Level 27: Desk Jockey]

Wow 3.5Mb is the best via the USB port in the router?

No, I said 3.5 MBps which == 28 Mbps
That's good enough for media streaming and faster than the internet's. It does what it's interned for.

[loo2]

Just stumbled across this thread, as it describes a similar problem to mine, ie slow usb speed on the router. Mine transfers at about 2MB/sec as opposed to 20MB/sec when attached to my PC usb port (and it definitely says MB/sec not mb/s). It is just unusably slow. I've tried turning off the remote differential compression as suggested above, but that hardly makes a difference (it's maybe 2.5MB/sec now). Not good