The relevant hardware for the following tests are .
Key PC Components
- Intel Pentium-D 820
- Asus P5WD2-Premium
- 2GB of memory
- Onboard Intel Lan
Network Components
- Asus RX3051 Router
- Verudium USB Network Server
USB Storage Devices
- Qimonda 2GB
- Sandisk Swivel 4GB
- Sandisk Cruzer Contour 8GB
Originally we tested using simple Windows Explorer copy function.
A general gauge of performance was obtained via Windows Performance Monitor and Task Manager's network monitoring.
However, these proved to be less than optimal and so we have reran the tests using better tools.
Software Used
- Panosys Throttlewatch for simultaneous CPU load display
- Attos Disk Benchmark for simultaneous read/write to USB devices.
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
- Microsoft Paint ;)
Pre Test
Attos was used to obtain individual performance figures for the USB storage devices connected via the Verudium USB Network Server.
Individually, the devices would present a combined write and read potential of approximately 12.6MB/s and 13.9MB/s respectively.
Simultaneous Test
Attos was started simultaneously on all 3 devices. As the devices have different read/write speeds,
this represent a more realistic environment where different users will be doing read/write functions at different timings.
Conclusion
As the images show, the real world performance of the Verudium USB Network Server is around
7.9 to 8.7 MB/s write and 8.4 to 10.1 MB/s read. Note that this is actual read/write performance
and does not include protocol overheads.
While the theoretical network speed of the 100Base-T network port used by the VUNS is capable of 12.5MB/s,
it is well known that realistic maximum is usually around 90% or approximately 11MB/s.
Considering the additional overheads and latency due to the added software and hardware layers,
these results show that the Verudium Network Server is capable of fully utilizing the available bandwidth.
Other Notes
Performance of the VUNS-01 emulated USB port is highly dependent on the host CPU.
As the images above show, the two cores of the CPU averages around 40% to 50%. Therefore,
an older single core processor slower than 2.8Ghz, or a dual core processor slower than 1.6Ghz will be unlikely to achieve full performance. As a comparison, on a 1.7Ghz single core Pentium M, the performance with the same devices was less than 2.5MB/s.
This also means that any task that places a high load on the CPU will also impact performance.
