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fishguy · Jan 28, 2007, 02:10 PM

I currently have a Linksys wireless G router. After seeing the new airport extreme with USB port for a shared external drive it made me wonder, If I bought an external drive with 10/100/1000 baseT connection for my linksys wireless router, would this drive be accessable to all wireless members (laptops) in my network in the same way that the USB drive would be in the airport extreme?

I see no reason to upgrade but having a shared drive would be great.

thanks

kamina · Jan 28, 2007, 02:28 PM

Yes, it would work just fine. This is the setup I have now. You might have to use samba (cifs) instead of afp, but that's not a big issue.

fishguy · Jan 28, 2007, 02:48 PM

Sorry, what is Samba? and what issue are you talking about?

ghporter · Jan 28, 2007, 08:38 PM

SAMBA is the Linux sharing system that lets you share files and peripherals with other computers, particularly Windows computers. And frankly. AFP is not as "helpful" over other sharing methods as it used to be.

Anyway, ANY drive that has an ethernet connection (you're not likely to find anything beyond 100BaseT speeds, at least not for a reasonable price) will connect and share just fine on your network. If your wireless computers can see the wired computers, they'll be able to see the networked drive.

I have a $70 CoolMax CN 550 network drive enclosure with a 300GB drive in it, and it is great! I can use it with both my Macs and Windows computers.

mduell · Jan 28, 2007, 08:40 PM

Yes, plugging a networked hard drive into your Linksys will share it with the network.

Samba is the name of the open source project that provides SMB protocol (Microsoft's Windows filesharing) support to Linux/OSX/etc. Some external hard drives only support SMB.

fishguy · Jan 28, 2007, 10:38 PM

Thanks. After looking into this it seems my Linksys only has 10/100 Base-T ethernet. Too bad. Now it seems that I will consider an upgrade, but it won't be airport extreme.

Possibly D-Link extreme n gigabit router.

spice003 · Jan 30, 2007, 08:56 AM

you might wonna get a draft N router with a gigabit switch built in for a gigabit hard drive enclosure.
airport extreme would be nice if it had gigabit ports cause then you can just use you external USB hard drive.

ghporter · Jan 30, 2007, 08:46 PM

fishguy, the majority of Linksys products do indeed support only up to 100BaseT, but they do have some gigabit switches around. You could get one and add it to the router (there is NO WAY IN THE WORLD you have a broadband connection that exceeds the capacity of a 100BaseT connection, and almost certainly not a 10BaseT connection), so your fast computers could talk at gigabit speeds and also share the Internet connection. Or get a "draft N" wireless router and do the same.

spice003, have you actually seen any draft N routers with gigabit switches? I haven't. In fact, I haven't seen any consumer-level gateway routers that support gigabit at all. If you can, please post a link to any you've seen.

El Gato · Jan 30, 2007, 08:58 PM

Originally Posted by ghporter

spice003, have you actually seen any draft N routers with gigabit switches? I haven't. In fact, I haven't seen any consumer-level gateway routers that support gigabit at all. If you can, please post a link to any you've seen.

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router

El Gato · Jan 30, 2007, 10:00 PM

Originally Posted by El Gato

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router

OK, it looks like D-Link changed their website (the product was there when I left work, and now it's gone).

Here's a couple different links for .11n gigabit routers:

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme Draft 802.11n Router - Gizmodo

Linksys WRT350N Gigabit 802.11N MIMO Router - Gizmodo

kamina · Jan 31, 2007, 03:23 AM

Let us know how it works... All the .n routers till now have gotten pretty bad reviews, would not want to be the first one testing