A quick search brought up no results. I'm curious if OpenWrt supports any routers with USB 3.0 ports and if it supports the faster speeds. Thanks.

Most router CPUs are too slow to do anything useful with the faster speeds. OpenWrt or stock doesn't matter. Hopefully this will change in the next generation as we move to more ARM-based CPUs.

newer Sitecom routers have USB3 and can run OpenWrt

see http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/sitecom/wlr-8100

but USB performance isn't that great because of weak CPU compared to "real" USB3 speed attainable on desktop Intel hardware

(Last edited by zloop on 1 Feb 2015, 22:41)

You could look at x86 based mini-PCs.

thanks. I might take a look into that, though it seems support is somewhat limited. And I can't even find a place that sells it in the US.

The idea of a low powered mini-PC isn't bad. I see Rasberry Pi doesn't offer a USB 3.0 solution. What options did you have in mind?

- Netgear R8000 has USB3 its WiP (see other thread)
dunno if it works atm

- APU1C has pcie expansion slots

- some serverboards might be viable like
Supermicro A1SRi-2558F (atom based ITX with 4xGBit LAN, 1x Management LAN, USB3, >2SATA)

(Last edited by zloop on 2 Feb 2015, 20:02)

The Pogoplug Series 4 has two USB 3.0 ports and can run OpenWRT. However as others have pointed out, USB3 speed is CPU bound. The Pogoplug v4 has a 800Mhz ARM processor and cannot take full advantage of the USB3 port. Not sure if multiple cores would make a difference, but I'm thinking 1.6Ghz or 2Ghz would be where you start seeing a difference in data throughput between a USB2 vs USB3 port.

thanks for the suggestions guys. Currently I top out at 10 MB/s on my TP-Link WDR4300 with a USB 2.0 drive using Samba. That's not bad, but that's only for transferring very large files. If I'm syncing work files from a PC, that may include thousands of small files, and the performance is abysmal.

The Netgear 7500 looks interesting as it uses a Qualcomm chipset and already has a limited AA build of OpenWRT available for it. I may just go that route and use the stock firmware for the time being. The Pogoplug is also something I'd like to look more into.

Sorry, I was mistaken. The USB 3.0 ports on the Pogoplug Series 4 doesn't seem to work. Only the USB 2.0 port works.

That probably some bug regarding missing config symbols / drivers /module /deviceteree settings.

http://archlinuxarm.org/article/2012011 … g-series-4
http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5 … g-series-4
clearly state support
"two USB 3.0 ports on the back provided by a controller connected to the internal PCIe bus"
but
" There is no U-Boot support for either SD or USB 3.0 booting."

other sources indicate USB3 works too once booted into Linux (http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,7477,7553)

That should not be limited by USB2, but the CPU.

The Linksys WRT1900AC has ESATA and a powerful CPU. That would be much better for you.
But the WRT1900AC is not entirely supported yet by standard OpenWRT, and I dont know anything about ESATA status. Check the WRT1900AC thread (most often on the first page) or the wiki.

Edit: just curious: is it a USB hard drive, or a USB memory stick? I could imagine some USB sticks could give rather bad performance for many small files... just guessing here.

(Last edited by zo0ok on 7 Feb 2015, 13:06)

Yes the USB3.0 ports work under Debian or Arch, but not under OpenWRT. Not sure what the issue is, but just wanted to correct my previous statement. The Pogoplug Mobile/Series 4 is not officially supported by OpenWRT yet, and I'm sure the community will figure out the underlying issue in the near future.

At any rate, the Pogoplug has a SAMBA transfer rate of approximately 20MBytes read and 17MByte write on the USB2.0 port and around the same speed on the USB3.0 port under Debian/Arch.

It's a USB hard drive (I've used both SSD and magnetic). I went ahead and ordered a Netgear R7500 X4 and I immediately have buyer's remorse. I've heard the horror stories about Netgear's firmware, and wow they were right. What a PoS. Very buggy. 5Ghz doesn't work reliably on my MacBook Pro, while it did just fine using the TP-Link WDR4300. Even a password protected Samba is broken. I already miss OpenWRT and it's been just a day. I'd be open to donating the Netgear R7500 if it means getting a working build of Barrier Breaker on it.

I did discover one thing through this whole process. Because of the password protection bug in Netgear's samba implementation, I decided to create a Truecrypt container on the samba share and mount that from my computer. This greatly speeds up writing of many small files, as I imagine Truecrypt is batching the encrypted blocks of data. So I may just go back to using the TP-Link since I was getting 10 MB/s or so

I've got a list of routers with at least one USB 3.0 port, however, I have not verified whether or not all of them have OpenWRT support...

Netgear WNDR4700
Netgear R7500 X4
Netgear R8000 X6
Pogoplug Series 4
Sitecom WLR-8100
Linksys WRT AC1900
Linksys EA6500 AC1750
Linksys EA6900 AC1900
Linksys E8350 AC2400
TP-LINK Archer C8 AC1750
TP-LINK Archer C9 AC1900
D-Link DIR-857
APU1C
APU1C4
APU1D
APU1D4

The Netgear WNDR7400 is under $100, and according to one review, they were able to achieve 28 MB/s write and 70 MB/s read.  Not half bad.  The APU boards are definitely more powerful and have more potential, but are maybe 2.5x the price when fully built.  Probably worth it, tho.  Pulls 6 to 12 Watts, whereas the WNDR7400 constantly draws just over 10 W.  An extra 4 W an hour translates to approximately an extra 3 kW / month, or 35 kW / year.  Amazing how such a little difference adds up over time, no?  I'm not sure what that translates to in economic loss (perhaps $10 to $20 every year?).

Also found an interesting travel router with only USB 2.0, tho.  The "Gl.iNet Smart Router", which is also rebranded as the "TBMax Smallest Smart Router" on Amazon, which saves a couple $$ on shipping.  This is a very capable router, which runs off a microUSB cord and draws less than 1 W.  Very exciting times we're living in, people! 

(Last edited by grndslm on 12 Apr 2015, 07:58)

The speeds obtained with factory/stock firmware (with proprietary components) may not be comparable to what is obtained under OpenWrt using only open source components.