Help me improve Wireless N throughput

dnme

Maybe someone can help...
I have Netgear DGN3500 router with a decent 1TB drive connected via USB. My laptop is running Intel 5300 Wifi card. Windows 7 reports a connection speed over WiFi adapter of 300Mbps. I am in the same room as the router (8 feet away) with a strong signal.

I have been disappointed with file transfer speeds over wifi for some time (that's why I upgraded the WiFi card). So today, I ran ATTO drive benchmark tests using both WiFi and Cabled 1Gb Ethernet. I know the ethernet will be far more reliable and faster than the Wifi but the point of the exercise was to rule out slow /bottleneck USB at the router.

A. Wifi transfer speeds


B. Cabled Ethernet speeds


So the tests above prove that the USB connection can handle 3/4 MB's R/W, therefore I should be able to achieve this using my WiFi setup which windows reports as connected at 300Mbps. Even when you take into account half duplex, noise etc, I should be getting much more than 1.5MB's surely ??

I live in a rural location, no competing WiFi anywhere near me. All I have is a cordless phone nearby but my WiFi signal is very strong and stable. How can I improve this awful throughput ?

Using Windows 764bit
Acer Travelmate 6592G
4GB Ram

Many thanks

KennyLegend

Apparently this is a known firmware problem with DLNA ReadyShare compatible routers and the trick is to format the drive to EXT3 partition.
I got this below off the netgear forums:
Its specific to the wndr3700 but I'm sure it's a similar issue.

* #3 * * *
September 9th, 2010, 10:55 PM

zashi21
Junior Member
NETGEAR Newbie
*
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 167

Re: NAS USB Read/Write Speeds
The router is limited because of the NTFS driver/application that interprets the data and the drive's info is limited by the processor speed (680 MHz). We need to take note that the router is also doing other functions (routing, wireless access, firewall protection, etc.).

It is more reasonable to connect the hard drive straight to the computer because it will save you time. The ReadyShare feature was made to be able to access the hard drive from the Internet easily.

dnme

dont think so because disk access speeds are 4/5MB's when I use wired ethernet so the issue is with wifi

KennyLegend

dnme wrote: »

dont think so because disk access speeds are 4/5MB's when I use wired ethernet so the issue is with wifi

I don't know a whole lot about this and I don't use this feature on my wndr3700 but I came across this thread that might be if interest to u:
http://forum1.netgear.com/showthread.php?t=55959

dnme

Trying a pen drive (fat32) now, Its about 0.5MB's faster than the WD.

Kenny, how do I format a drive to EXT3?

KennyLegend

dnme wrote: »

Trying a pen drive (fat32) now, Its about 0.5MB's faster than the WD.

Kenny, how do I format a drive to EXT3?

Google is ur best friend

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

dnme

Right, I managed to format a drive to ext3, placed it back in router, rebooted router, ran Win7 again and fired up DGN3500 in browser.

But, now the DGN3500 des not see any drive at all. Also, no usb light at the front of the router.

KennyLegend

U might find more info on this over on the netgear forums, especially on the wndr3700 discussion board. There's quite a few topics on DLNA ReadyShare issues on there. Your dgn3500 would be similiar.