USB 2.0 to Gigabit switch/router?

Question

Has anyone used a Linksys NSLU2 Network storage link to allow cabling USB 2.0 drives to an ethernet network? What transfer speeds have you achieved? Would it be overkill to equip this device to a Gigabit switch/router?

Answer 1

I have an NSLU2, and even with doubling the speed of the onboard processor (Man, this thing is SO hackable), I average about 5-6 Megabytes (40-48 Megabits) per second for sustained reads/writes. This is about half as good as my inter-PC transfers on Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps). Still, it's plenty fast for me to simultaneously stream standard-def video to 2 machines and play back mp3s. It's no slouch, but it is not a sprinter either.

As for getting a gigabit switch, the network port on the NSLU2 is only 100 Megabit (Fast Ethernet), so the "SLUG" would not benefit from a gigabit switch.

There's a LOT of cool info on the "SLUG" out there:
http://www.nslu2-linux.org
Even overclocking to a "Turbo-SLUG":
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/HowTo/OverClockTheSlug

Answer 2

Any USB 2.0 device is limited by the speed of the USB connection, not the network connection. Since USB 2.0 speeds are 480Mb/s then the gigabit switch/router is the only thing that will allow the USB 2.0 device to work at its fastest speed.