Netgear ReadyNAS RN202 2-bay NAS Review

Encryption Support Evaluation

Consumers looking for encryption capabilities can opt to encrypt a iSCSI share with TrueCrypt or some in-built encryption mechanism in the client OS. However, if requirements dictate that the data must be shared across multiple users / computers, relying on encryption in the NAS is the best way to move forward. Most NAS vendors use the industry-standard 256-bit AES encryption algorithm. One approach is to encrypt only a particular shared folder while the other approach is to encrypt the full volume. Netgear supports only volume-level encryption. In addition, a USB drive (into which the key is written at the time of volume creation) needs to be attached to the unit for the encrypted volume to remain / be mounted.

On the hardware side, encryption support can be in the form of specialized hardware blocks in the SoC (common in ARM / PowerPC based NAS units). In x86-based systems, accelerated encryption support is dependent on whether the AES-NI instruction is available on the host CPU. The Annapurna Labs SoC has hardware crypto engines that enable minimal hit in performance with encrypted volumes.

The performance of the encrypted volume is easily the best amongst all the ARM-based NAS units that have been evaluated so far. The x86-based units in the list above don't have AES-NI, and hence, the ARM-based RN202 easily manages to win out. There is definitely a performance hit compared to unencrypted volumes, and this can only be resolved by going to higher performance platforms./p>