Are there any routers available with functional DLNA with USB drive?

[Doppel]

There are many routers now with USB ports, but wide reports of the performance not being very good.

I want a router (preferably an n; ac I don't care about) with a USB port that will let me use the router as an FTP server and DLNA server.

January, 2012: http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=6483
Conclusion: nothing worth bothering with

Summer, 2013: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2107437
Conclusion: nothing worth bothering with

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Surely there's something? With all these routers advertising DLNA, there must be one that actually works well...? I am tired of having a laptop as a designated server. Also, most (all?) of the low-end NAS devices kind of suck, so I like the idea of using a USB drive with a router so that if the drive dies I just get another.

 

[smakme7757]

http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/
That's what i have at home and i can't fault it. By far the most stable router i've ever owned. Also packed with features.

Very good community built up around the device here:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=46

It has all the features you need, but I've never used them as i have an own box dedicated to that sort of stuff.

 

[smitbret]

They are out there, but they are generally garbage. I would never use a router for this purpose. Outside of print serving, USB ports on routers are just a gimmick. Not to mention the issues of transcoding incompatible media files.

Get a dedicated box or something like a WDTV Live Hub for this and you'll be much, much, much happier. My WHS 2011 box doubles as the NAS and Media Server. Always on, Media Server software that can transcode on the fly. Couldn't be happier.

 

[DavidT99]

They are out there, but they are generally garbage. I would never use a router for this purpose. Outside of print serving, USB ports on routers are just a gimmick. Not to mention the issues of transcoding incompatible media files.

Get a dedicated box or something like a WDTV Live Hub for this and you'll be much, much, much happier. My WHS 2011 box doubles as the NAS and Media Server. Always on, Media Server software that can transcode on the fly. Couldn't be happier.

I use one of the USB ports on the Rt-N66U to connect to my smartphone so if my broadband goes down I have a backup that gets me back on line using the phones 3g.

David

 

[Venomous]

I own the RT66U with both USB ports equipped with 128gb flash drives to feed my kids their movies and for me to watch a few things. Works flawlessly across my home theatre and kids kids have no problems accessing their movies directly from the router through their 55" samsung led. I highly recommend this router.

The parental controls is the only thing that sucks on stock firmware.

 

[88keys]

They are out there, but they are generally garbage. I would never use a router for this purpose. Outside of print serving, USB ports on routers are just a gimmick. Not to mention the issues of transcoding incompatible media files.

Get a dedicated box or something like a WDTV Live Hub for this and you'll be much, much, much happier. My WHS 2011 box doubles as the NAS and Media Server. Always on, Media Server software that can transcode on the fly. Couldn't be happier.

I don't know about that. I have a Buffalo WZR-300HP that has a USB port and I run samba on it to share files from my flash drive. I already have a NAS, but I use the flash drive to host drivers, recovery images, and other crap via an unsecured share (no username or pass). This way when I'm working on a friends PC, I can just grab the files I need really quick and go (when logging in from a computer thats not mine).


And if I need to download the stuff from afar, I can login to my router and start the FTP server and share my flash drive over the internet.

And yes, this is through the stock firmware.... That happens to be DD-WRT based.

I'd say it's a pretty effective basic NAS solution.


I ran a DLNA server on my old FreeNAS server (now NAS4free) and currently do the same on my Ubuntu server, and I know it does take a a bit of CPU power to do the transcoding and basically get things running correctly. Granted my old NAS was just an Atom D510, but that's probably a million times faster than the CPUs you'll find on consumer end routers. I could be wrong, but I don't for see the best results from a router based DLNA service.

However in a technical sense, I suppose DD-WRT and DD-WRT based firmwares can support DLNA, but not right out of the box. You'll have to enable the ssh server and get into busy box and install the required packages. You'll most likely have to partition your USB drive in a specific way to make this work so you can install the software and host the media all from the same drive.

Perhaps there are routers that can do this better, but I'd be willing to bet that any router that supports what the OP needs out of the box (and does the job well) is going to be $100 plus at which point I think it just makes 1000x more sense to just build a media server yourself. You can find some pretty good CPU mobo deals on ebay for under $50 shipped if you look around.

I just got an Intel D945GTP which has an onboard Intel PRO gig adapter along with a Pentium D 805 for $40 shipped.

 

[88keys]

I use one of the USB ports on the Rt-N66U to connect to my smartphone so if my broadband goes down I have a backup that gets me back on line using the phones 3g.

David

That's a good idea. Never thought of that...

 

[s44]

However in a technical sense, I suppose DD-WRT and DD-WRT based firmwares can support DLNA, but not right out of the box. You'll have to enable the ssh server and get into busy box and install the required packages.

Most/all the current Tomato builds have it out of the box.