I dunno, maybe I'm just cranky because I've always loved the NSLU2 in
concept, and I'm disappointed that Linksys didn't follow through. When I
think how much the cost of memory has come down and the performance of
processors has gone up since the NSLU2 was first designed, I'd kinda hoped
we'd be looking at a $100 NSLU3 or NSLU4 by now, with performance limited
more by the Ethernet i/f than the CPU, maybe with Firewire800 or even eSata
sockets.
While I'm dreaming, I'd also like a pony.
carl lowenstein pointed out (among other things)...
>But reme[m]ber that a handful of megabytes is eight hands full of megabits.
Fair enough, but... I would like to get a bit closer to the theoretical
maximum. I cracked open the two USB2 enclosures I'm thinking of repurposing
and found vintage DiamondMax Plux 9 SATA 1 drives inside. So the claimed
performance for the drive itself is 150Mbps, (a long way short of the SATA 1
limit) although this
test<http://modtown.co.uk/mt/review2.php?id=maxtor200sata&p=3>says
that 110Mbps is more realistic. Either way, that's a pretty good match
to the theoretical network capacity of 100Mbps, or 12.5MBps (and yeah,
nobody is really going to get that in the real world for lots of reasons).
It seems like the NSLU2 gets about one quarter to one third of that, i.e. 3
to 4 MBps (and the NAS200, which I guess is Linksys' intended
successor, is barely
better <http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30127/75/1/2/>;). It
looks like d-link, synology, and some of the other vendors other posters
mentioned can achieve more like 6 to 8 MBps.
So in answer to the poster who wisely asked, "what do you really need from
the device?", my list would look something like this:
- Performance much closer to the interface's limit, but at least 6MBps
- Performs "adequately"; from native Windows apps like Winamp, not just rsync
- Doesn't crap out during intensive disk-to-disk copies, e.g. syncing the
MP3 library with synctoys
I can't really justify the cost of gigabit ethernet and, more importantly,
disks fast enough to task it (having just got done upgrading my wife's tower
to Sata II and 1TB of disk...). At least, not this year...
--
View my personal blog at TheCzarDictates.blogspot.com
The contents of this message represent the
personal opinion of Carl Zetie and do not
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