Gigabit LinkStation is power user's dream NAS drive

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Product: HD-HG300LAN Gigabit LinkStation
Capacity: 300 GB
Company: Buffalo Technology
Price: ~ $304 (USA) - £244.72 (UK)

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THERE IS NEVER enough storage. USB and Serial-ATA external drives provide some relief to the storage hunger, but they're still "PC-bound", you must leave the computer running 24/7 to share it across a home or office LAN.

What is included: UK and U.S. power plugs, ethernet cable.
Software CD with the Windows IP finder utility
and backup scheduling software

"Network Attached Storage" devices -NAS from now on- provide an easy solution to free your files from any given "server" PC. Whenever you have a functioning PC attached to your home or office network, you can access your treasure-trove. And if it's based on open standards (DHCP, SMB, FTP, HTTP) like in the case of Buffalo's gigabit Linkstation, then it's a dream scenario.

What sets the Linkstation apart

Accessing the Linkstation from linux.
Web-based config screen from Firefox

If you want an inexpensive 100 Mbit, fast ethernet NAS drive, I don't hesitate to recommend any device based on Broadcom's NAS-on-a-chip, like the one I reviewed here. But if you're a power user you always want more. That's where the HD-HG300LAN excels: it's not only a NAS, it's also a full blown PC -sans a video card- running linux on a 266MHz PowerPC CPU, and sporting 128MB of RAM, all inside a beatiful plastic case with a silent fan and mirror-finish front panel, where the Link/Activity led lights green when operating in "fast ethernet" mode or blue when connected at Gigabit speed.

A pair of USB ports, one in the front and the other in the back, allow plugging an external USB 2.0 hard drive for additional storage or backup, and a USB printer (Postscript or a handful of Epson models), acting as a "print server". Since GigE ports support "auto MDI / MDI-X" there's not even a need to have or carry around a "crossover cable" or adapter, you can even plug it directly into a PC's or notebook's ethernet port.

Good looking, internal multi-voltage power supply,
superb construction and almost-silent fan

Every aspect of the LinkStation operation can be controlled via its web management interface, ensuring its cross-platform compatibility. I tested it with Firefox 1.5 from Linux, SeaMonkey 1.0 from Windows, and of course, the omnipresent "integral part of the operating system", Internet Exploder. The management screens are well laid-out and surprisingly some options like changing the unit's "Jumbo Frame" size reconfigure the NIC without even requiring a power-cycling or reboot. If you're lucky enough to afford the purchase of a pair of HGLAN LinkStations, you can even setup a scheduled back-up, so one unit will back-up itself to the other over the gigabit ethernet connection at the user-selected specified intervals.

Internally, the unit uses the EXT3 journaling filesystem, but that doesn't prevent it from reading FAT32 partitions on an external USB 2.0 drive plugged into one of its USB ports. The FTP service comes disabled by default, and anonymous ftp access is allowed, with permissions based on login (users) or "user groups" can be configured via the web admin interface. Finally, the unit firmware includes the "PCast" media server software which allows streaming files to Buffalo's LinkTheater Mini TV-hooked media player (feature not reviewed).

Test-drive

For my tests I used a variety of scenarios. For cross-platform compatibility testing I included: moving around files via the Gnome desktop from my Gateway 7422 notebook with a GigE cardbus card attached -which runs the 64-bit linux distro "64 Studio"-, moving around files from my eMachines M6810 notebook running WinXP SP2 -both by accesing folders via Network Neighbourhood and via FTP-, linux access from another distro (Blag), and finally by running PassMark's disk test on WinXP to compare it with the 100Mbit SimpleShare NAS.

To avoid introducing further bottlenecks into the equation like the cardbus-to-gigabit network cards used in notebooks, all benchmarks and performance tests -with and without a Gigabit ethernet switch in between, and with and without Jumbo frames enabled- were performed on my " transparent desktop" a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 with 512MB running BLAG, a UK Linux distro based on Fedora Core 3, and finally the same desktop machine running WinXP SP2. This system's Supermicro P4SCA includes an onboard gigabit ethernet port, handled by an Intel 82541 GigE chipset. The charts and test results you'll see below were created by testing the unit's Windows performance with Passmark Performance Test, v6.0.

File "drag-and-drop" copying and timings

These measurements are for the file copy operation of a 1.2 gigabytes file -one of my DVDs converted to a .ratdvd file- from the Gnome desktop on Blag Linux:

With Linksys EG-005W five-port GigE switch:

JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 1500 (Linkstation) PC=default	Time (Min)	Time (sec)
LS -> PC	6:38	398
PC -> LS	7:06	426
JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 4k (Linkstation) PC=default
LS -> PC	6:38	398
PC -> LS	6:59	419
JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 7418 (Linkstation) PC=default
LS -> PC	6:55	415
PC -> LS	6:58	418

Direct connection (LinkStation <-> PC)

JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 1500 (Linkstation) PC=default	Time (Min)	Time (sec)
LS -> PC	6:37	397
PC -> LS	7:06	426
JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 4k (Linkstation) PC=default
LS -> PC	6:33	393
PC -> LS	7:01	421
JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 7418 (Linkstation) PC=default
LS -> PC	6:40	400
PC -> LS	6:52	418

Notice how the results at 1500-byte frame size are almost identical between the "with switch" and "without switch" scenarios. I immediatelly learned that the linux PC was not "auto detecting" the changes in Jumbo Frame size, and that one must do the changes manually (ifconfig ethx mtu xxxx - where xxxx is the frame size).

So I decided to manually configure the linux PC to use the highest possible frame size handled by the LinkStation: 7418 bytes.

I plugged the LinkStation and the PC to the Linksys GigE switch, tried to copy a file and... HANG. No bytes would move between the two systems. In fact, it seemed as if the LinkSys was acting as a "packet filter". I reduced the LinkStation and the PC's frame size to 4k... same story. The end of this long story is that in order to take advantage of "Jumbo Frames", apparently the following must happen:

• You must have a "Jumbo-Frames aware" switch (and not all switches support all frame sizes).
• The PC and the LinkStation must be configured with a matching "frame size" (MTU in linuxspeak if you're running Linux).
• Every GigE PC connected to the same switch must be configured with the same frame size.
• Apparently larger jumbo frames don't make much difference in direct device-to-device connections - if there's no "jumbo frames aware" GigE switch in the middle.

Here are the timings of my Jumbo Frames test (7418 bytes on both the PC/Linux side and the LinkStation), hooked directly to one another:

JUMBO FRAME SIZE: 7418 (Linkstation) PC=7418t
LS -> PC	6:40	400
PC -> LS	6:52	418

PassMark WinXP scores

The following are the results of running PassMark PT 6.0 with the i82451 set at the closest to 4k value (4088) on the Intel WinXP drivers drop-down, and the LinkStation at 4100 bytes, with a direct device-to-device connection. Notice how it scored over 2.5x higher than the 100Mbit SimpleShare:

WinXP with 4K Jumbo Frames: Over 2x faster in random RW vs. "Fast Ethernet"
Measured with Passmark Performance Test from WinXP SP2

A special note with regards to Jumbo Frames
I admit in shame not being aware of all the implications of Jumbo Frames in Gigabit Ethernet when I began this review. As a matter of fact, I've been running GigE for over a year with Jumbo Frames disabled (1500 byte default frame size). The Awful Truth is that the current scenario is just plain madness: Intel's gigabit ethernet drivers for WinXP show the following fixed Jumbo Frame sizes: 4088 bytes, 9014, and 16128. Intel's 16k Jumbo Frames are definitely not supported by the "below-$100" unmanaged switches that folks are likely to have at home. Plus, you can see clearly the fixed values do not match the LinkStation's default values of 1518, 4100 and 7418 bytes. Only setting the values to 4100 on the LinkStation and 4088 on the Intel (which is a close value nonetheless) seemed to have a drastic effect on performance (see Passmark results above).

Why can't La Intella and the linux world agree on some default jumbo frame sizes?.

INQuired about this, a SMC switches product manager said: "Ultimately Jumbo frames is a packet bigger than 1522bytes. Therefore chip vendors, operating systems all differ. :(". Then adding "We have had some issues with the relating to Jumbo frames. Basically the current units support 8K jumbo frames but the version which also support the RoHS regulations will support 9K jumbo frames". He concluded: "Our entry-level switches GS-8 and 8508T should both support 9K jumbo frames". What a rosy scenario, this Jumbo-Mess!. I conclude you better settle for 4k Jumbo frames. Anything above it is playing the lottery.

The verdict
Rarely do I shed any tears when I have to part with a piece of hardware, but I'm going to make an exception this time when the UPS guy comes to pick up the linkstation to travel back to Buffalo's headquarters. It gets four and a half Fernandos in my personal one-to-five rating scale. The ability to void your warranty and gain full telnet/ssh access and install a plethora of additional open source software inside it -some people are apparently even running P2P clients inside it-, and even commercial "Media Server" applications like TwonkyVision makes this NAS drive a computer geek's dream.

Linux-friendly: supports FTP, SMB, DHCP.
Saves power and extends drive life if you set "wake up" and "sleep" times.

The only complaints I have with Buffalo are:

1. The same I had with Simpletech's Simpleshare: a lack of any cross-platform utility to initially find the unit's assigned ip address on your LAN -if using DHCP-, or for manually resetting its initial IP address, and:
2. The limited number of printers supported by the unit's USB port. Adding support for HP inkjets -which already have some decent linux support- should be a great.

Gigabit ethernet over copper speeds are not the "10x" theoretical increase one would originally expect, but rather a more humble 2.5x speed increase when compared with the 100Mbit Simpleshare. This is probably due to the less-than-ideal average hardware that comprised my test system, including its 5400rpm parallel-ata hard drive and Jumbo Frames-disfunctional GigE switch. But believe me, even in my test scenario the more than twofold speed increase is well worth the money and the time savings when transferring thousands of MP3s, or dozens of 650-mb Mpeg4 movies and 4-gigabyte DVD rips to your NAS. The multi-voltage internal power supply, silent fan and its gorgeous external looks are just the icing on the cake. µ

See Also
SMC 8-port Gigabit Ethernet switch for $41
Supermicro P4SCA with Intel 82541 GigE onboard - Test system used for the benchmarks
Simpletech's Simpleshare almost a cross-platform panacea
Java based NAS discovery coming to the Simpleshare