EggXpert

Hi All - Love it or hate it, I'm strongly considering picking up a Drobo 2.  I'm still a bit irked that the DroboShare is a separate component and further irked that it can only be connected over USB 2.0 instead of the newly added FireWire.  I don't know the stats offhand to know for sure whether or not USB 2.0 could be a bottleneck in a GigaBit network.

Having said that, I'm in the midst of doing some home upgrades which will include the addition of a GigaBit router.  I have my eye on a few selections but just noticed this on the Drobo website in their FAQ:

"DroboShare was created specifically to allow you to share your Drobo over thenetwork. Additionally, Drobo can be shared by connecting it to a Mac or PC and turning “sharing”on or by connecting it to certain routers that accept external storage such as the Time Capsule or Airport Extreme."

I did a search for routers with external storage capability and couldn't find very much.  I did come across this router by U.S. Robotics that has FireWire and USB 2.0 ports called out specifically as being there for a NAS unit.  I figured that since I'm going to be getting a new router anyway, I might as well get one that supports this functionality and skip picking up a DroboShare.

So my question is; what are some good GigaBit routers out there that support external storage connections?

Thanks!

There's gigabit, and then there's fake gigabit.  Fake gigabit is when you have a gigabit port on a device which actually transfers no faster than 100 Mb/s.  The majority of cheap consumer devices based on low-end internal hardware fall into this category, as would a typical router with a storage link.  There may be exceptions, but they're not common, so the point here is that if you really want gigabit performance, you have to be careful and get something with sufficient hardware capability and not be fooled just by the presence of gigabit ports.

SmallNetBuilder has performance data on a number of consumer NAS devices.

Madwand:

There's gigabit, and then there's fake gigabit.  Fake gigabit is when you have a gigabit port on a device which actually transfers no faster than 100 Mb/s.  The majority of cheap consumer devices based on low-end internal hardware fall into this category, as would a typical router with a storage link.  There may be exceptions, but they're not common, so the point here is that if you really want gigabit performance, you have to be careful and get something with sufficient hardware capability and not be fooled just by the presence of gigabit ports.

SmallNetBuilder has performance data on a number of consumer NAS devices.

Agreed.  And SmallNetBuilder is an EGGXCELANT resource for real testing of networking equipment. 

as for USB 2.0  ?

480Mbs max.  divide by 8 =  60MBs.  if usb 2.0 is how it is connected to a network, then USB would not bottleneck a Fast Ethernet 100Mbs network....it WOULD bottleneck, (on paper,) a Gigabit though.  1000 vs 480 .

The key would be actually GETTING Gigabit speeds.  It is not enough to purchase networking appliances that are capable of that speed.

Tallon41 

Thank you both for the great feedback!  I've had very little experience with Gigabit equipment in a home/consumer environment as I haven't had the need until now so this helps.

I did a bit more research and discovered that there are a number of complaints that the Drobo 2 doesn't do much better than it does on a 100Mbs setup, not even coming close to the USB 2.0 threshold of 480Mbps.

Thanks again, I'll check out SmallNetBuilder...