Net N900 Central Storage Router issues

Hello community,

It has been a while but I am back! :smiley:

I recently acquired Western Digital My Net N900 Central 1 TB HD Dual-Band Storage Router (WDBKSP0010BCH-HESN) and mostly pleased with it but there are some strange symptoms which prompted me to open a case/ticket with WD

See the Case Ref Number : :

Basically I have these issues

  1. 5GHz radio range is very less ( less than 5 feet) and it drops the transfer rate as you go far and this being a high end consumer router I expected a better range. The 2Ghz radio does not suffer this problem.

  2. SMB server on this My Net N900 series is any different? Because I am having issues with android based tablets trying to access the SMB share via “ES Explorer” application for example.

The problem is it sees the SMB server just fine and displays the root directory fine. But the sub directory contents are not getting displayed. It keeps showing subdirectories name repeatedly each time you touch and navigate it down… Very odd.

The same android tablet is able to browse WD Live Duo’s SMB share just fine. So it’s got to do with the SMB server on the My Net Series. I also have seen the same symptom on N900 (The one without HDD) attached USB drives and their Samba shares.

  1. I keep losing my password whenever I make some changes in the GUI and between router reboots. I can recreate at will by saving the config file backup and attempting to restore the same. Once the router reboots., the password is set to default and drives me crazy .

  2. The unit gets warm to hot after few hours of operation but never automatically attempt to start the built-in Fan - Looks that the temperature sensor on this board is malfunctioning as it takes considerable amount of heat buildup before it actually works - could be a firmware bug? or is it by design? - I like the slient operation but I do not want to fry my board in the long run :wink:

  3. Fasttrack QoS service has some major issues. I got tired of the slowness when I enabled that. Please look into it. The major selling point of this unit is Fastrrack QoS but it has issues! - I am not alone read the comments everywhere in the web.

I know WD listens to users like me on this forums and eventually fixes it after many many months. I know the symptoms are not something that can be fixed by inserting a paper clip and resetting to factory defaults :smiley: so please do not suggest that to me!

Keep those fixes coming!.. 

Love the router otherwise… Good job guys!

Vistawall

Well since I see no new replies, I assume that WD is still looking into these matters. Having said. I continue to test the router and here are some more bugs that I have noticed.

  1. Samba server contiunes to have strange issues with other devices except windows XP or Win7 PCs. I cannot understand what is the limitation or issue. But the truth is even WDTV live media player has issues in seeing the SMB share from WD900 Central Storage.

At least for the WD Live Player’s perspective - The problem seems to be something to do with the limit of files present in the shares. If you have less than 120 files or directories in the top level root directory these non windows machines have no issues in reading that directory from SMB share. But as soon as you have more files in the root directory or complex nested subdirectories with files more than 127+ or more the Android devices and also now newly discovered WD Live media player has issues in seeing those files and directories It says “UNTITLED VOLUME” on WD TV Live. It basically truncates anything above 127 files in the subdirectory. If I made multiple sub directories as long as they are lower than 127 it sees them fine! - bizzare!

The Android tablet has no visiblity as stated before. It does not matter how many files or subdirectories are present  it just only displays the subdirectory name over and over again without showing the actual contents of the sub directory.

Obviously the SMB server on WD900 Central Storage has issues with respect to other devices except Windows PCs which seems to see the SMB shares just fine! . Please look into that.

  1. Restore Drive to factory default has a serious bug - The process of downloading the necessary files from WD servers via the restore HDD option in the GUI -the Firmware attempts to paritiion the drive but does not populate the WD software present in the Public folder from factory. - Severity 2 Bug

  2. I was attempting to populate the Internal drive and I found that transferring files from wireless connection to the drive is very slow (max of 8 to 12Mbps max write speeds for large files but for small files the transfer rate is 2Mbps or slower) at that rate It would take more than 40 hours to populate the 1Tb HDD. While the SMB performance is not that bad for a storage router the wireless file transfer really **bleep**!  - using the Gigabit wired connection the rates are decent enough. Almost like USB attached drive.

  3. The password getting lost due to unknown reason seems to affect not only the admin login password. but the SMB user (other than public) also is seen to get lost! - Serious issue as the router connects to internet and if someone is careless they can hack into your router easily as it now has default password. - This is Severity 1 bug.

  4. Sometimes, while fiddling the Wireless settings properties page the GUI is designed to flip to wireless security to NONE and if you are not careful in noting the changes you made, while you may have WPA2/PSK personal mode selected stuck and your can be running that mode without any added security. - This is a Severity 3 bug.

I know it takes time to fix problems as these needs testing and lot of validation process. WD is usually very responsive and I have seen you guys fix many of the problems that I have reported across platforms of products. Please see that this information gets routed to the correct department for problem resolution.

I will be happy if someone acknowledges these issues and for me SMB oddities seems the most troubling one for me. I am still baffled why this is happening and I would love to see others share their experiences with SMB share issues reported above.

Thanks!

Vistawall

Hey Vistawall,

Well to answer some of your questions of your first post, were I can.

  1. Yes, this is fairly normal for 5Ghz networks.  5Ghz does not have the range of the 2.4Ghz.  You might want to read this here:  http://www.alternativewireless.com/cellular-antennas/wifi-solutions/5ghz-wireless-lan.html

The 5Ghz bandwith is only designed for short distances.  It could  have a longer range, but there are regulations on higher bandwiths and this may be to with having to do with staying in compliance with those regulations, but don’t hold me to that.

  1. Yes, I can confirm that accessing the router from an Android device will not allow you to access lower folders and this does appear to be a bug with SMB shares.

  2. I’m not seeing this issue.  What FW version do you have?  If you have the latest, 1.03.11 and you had to upgrade to this version when you got the router, try doing a factory rest.  This can fix some issues after an upgrade.

4.  You shouldn’t have to worry about frying your board, they can take quiet a bit of heat.  Mine gets faily warm, but never really hot.  If it gets almost too hot to touch then you should worry, but the router is designed for the fan not to come on until it gets pretty hot (I don’t think I have ever seen mine come on at all).  But if you have your router in a cabinet or some kind of enclosure, especially were other equipment is giving off heat,  I would move to somewhere more open so that can get better airflow.

  1. I’ve never really needed Fasttrack, so I can’t speak to that, but due to the complaints I’ve seen, then I can say that there is most likely a bug with this.
1 Like

Hello! Tinwarble,

Thanks for your responses. Getting these from a honored contributor like you in the community makes me very happy :smiley: you got my vote for that! 

Thanks for confirming the bug with Android devices and SMB shares access issues. That is most troubling bug for me. The same bug manifests itself even with WDTV LIVE HUB and WDTV LIve network share access from these devices that I have. The oddity is that  if you have more than 200+ nested sub directories. It displays them as ’ UNTITLED VOLUME’ and the directory structure displayed on WDTV live series is all messed up. I am sure WD has seen this… afterall it is their own product!

As far as heat is concerned. I agree with you. I am not too worried either as the FAN does start after the cooking begins! :smileyvery-happy: and it does exhaust enough heat out of the box. But this not a router that you can throw in your closet. Remember that you not only have router chips that generate heat but you also have a 2.5 inch HDD spinning! - You do need to have good ventilation around the box otherwise all the lights flash like christmas tree!

The 5GHZ limitations on distance is understandable but not what this product really delivers. It delivers very poor 5GHZ range (5 feet at max for the advertised 300+ Mbps speeds) than any of the competitor’s devices can give. I do have a very old NETGEAR Share Max 300 router that I have DD-WRT running and with couple of 2.4GHZ streams I can get better performance out of that old timer than this so called high tech router.

I would consider useful range of 5GHZ radio to be at 15 to 20 feet at 300+ Mbps connection so that I can stream off the router in a mid size living room wirelessly otherwise it just does make sense to call it ’ wireless route r’ when you can be using a 5 Feet CAT 5 instead for wired gigabit connection :confounded:

Having said, This is WD’s first attempt into the router market. I can understand that they are probably going to improve the product (Just like they did with WD TV line of products) with future firmware updates.

I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that WD releases a newer firmware update.

Thanks again Tinwarble 

Cheers! :stuck_out_tongue:

I just turned in an identical problem about SMB to WD support.  I’m aiting a callback from their 2nd level.  

Check my post:  http://community.wdc.com/t5/My-Net-Networking-Devices/N750-Drive-Not-Functional-With-iPhone-or-Android-File-Share/m-p/528939

Hi,

Any news ?

Are SMB shares working properly with Linux ?

Regards