DS1819+ and 10Gb Ethernet and M.2 Adapter Card E10M20-T1

[pvanosta]

My DS1819+ was connected via 4-way GB bond to a multi-gigabit LAN (2.5 Gbit switches all around). My transfer speeds (copying large files back and forth) was 75 to 80 MB/s or around 600-650 Mbit/sec.
I installed a new 10Gb Ethernet and M.2 Adapter Card E10M20-T1 (which has a 10 GB ethernet port) and switched to that as the connection to the LAN. To my surprise, my transfer speed dropped by half. I now only get around 40 MB/s.
I changed back to the 4-way bond and speed went back up to 80 MB/s.
What am I missing? Is this expected behavior? If so, what is the point of the 10GB port/card?

Update: I have since deleted the 4-way bond (4x 1Gb ethernet ports) and created a new 5-way bond (4x1 Gb plus the 10Gb port), as an experiment.
As my switches are all 2,5Gb, the bond now shows 4x 1Gb full duplex and 1x 2.5 Gb full duplex for a total theoretical max of 6.5 Gb full duplex.
BUT: if I copy a large file from NAS to laptop, I get 90-92 MB/sec (fine). When I copy the same large file the other way around, from laptop to NAS, I only get 40 MB/sec.

What could be causing that?

 

[tgl]

Asymmetrical transfer speeds suggest a buffering problem somewhere. You've said little about what your network infrastructure is, so it's hard to speculate more.

BTW, I'm fairly sure that a LAG setup is useless for improving single-transfer speed: any one connection will flow through only one of the bonded links, to avoid problems with out-of-order packet receipt. I'd be really dubious about bonding different-speed links, because I'm not sure that you'd get sane behavior about preferring the faster link.

 

[sfx2000]

Interesting read...

https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/17gej2z/very_pleased_with_e10m20t1_card

 

[pvanosta]

Thank you for your input. More about my network setup in a second. But if the data would seek the path of least resistance, I would expect the 10GB port on its own to be faster than the 4x1 GB bond on its own. The network setup: ISP Modem (10 GB fiber) => TPLink BE65 mesh main node => 2.5 GB 16-port switch (unmanaged) => ethernet to living room => ethernet to 2.5 GB switch => ethernet to TPLink BE65 node => wireless to laptop. The NAS is in the utility closet with the ISP Modem and the TPLink main node.

 

[tgl]

So, there's no 10G support anywhere within your LAN, but nonetheless you thought putting a 10G card on your NAS would improve your life? Doesn't work like that. You could try upgrading all your switches to 10G, but it'd still make only marginal difference for transfers to/from a single client that has a less-than-10G port.

Unless your normal workflow involves concurrent transfers between the NAS and several clients, I'd try flushing all the bonding stuff and seeing if it works any better as a single 2.5G connection. Complicating what the switches have to do is not helpful here.

 

[pvanosta]

Thanks. I understand that a 10GB card will not magically make my 2.5GB LAN faster than 2.5GB. In my original post I described how I installed the 10GB card and deleted the 4x1 GB bond (is that what you meant by flushing the bonding stuff?), using only the single 10GB connection (looking for a better transfer speed at 2.5GB than the 4x1 GB bond). When that didn't happen, I set up the 5-way bond and got higher txfer speeds NAS to Laptop but no improvement laptop to Nas. What could be some of the causes of asymmetrical txfer speeds that I can investigate?

 

[Digilog]

What could be causing that?

The network stack is not configured for 10Gb.
So you have access to the system shell and os files? It shouldn't be hard to fix this.
Most OS systems configure a net stack for like 2,5Gb interfaces at the most because larger network stack settings in the transmit and receive buffers end up with buffer bloat if not connected at 5Gb+ speeds.

 

[pvanosta]

Ok, one more datapoint: from a wired PC, I have symmetrical file transfer speeds (100MB/sec in both directions). The asymmetry appears to be limited to my (wifi-connected) laptop.
Also, for the record, I bought the 10GB LAN card in the hope of removing any and all bottlenecks on the side of the NAS. The rest of my LAN is 2.5 GB (ISP and all switches). I know wifi 6 / 6E has its limitations compared to wifi7, but I'd be happy if the txfer speed was symmetrical (the same up as down) via wifi, the way it is over ethernet. Now back to your question: I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I have admin rights and I can be walked through most things short of open heart surgery. Happy to hear your thoughts.

 

[Digilog]

Ok, one more datapoint: from a wired PC, I have symmetrical file transfer speeds (100MB/sec in both directions). The asymmetry appears to be limited to my (wifi-connected) laptop.
Also, for the record, I bought the 10GB LAN card in the hope of removing any and all bottlenecks on the side of the NAS. The rest of my LAN is 2.5 GB (ISP and all switches). I know wifi 6 / 6E has its limitations compared to wifi7, but I'd be happy if the txfer speed was symmetrical (the same up as down) via wifi, the way it is over ethernet. Now back to your question: I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but I have admin rights and I can be walked through most things short of open heart surgery. Happy to hear your thoughts.

in a root terminal execute:

ipconfig

and see what the ports are configured as. (copy and post the results so I can see them)
Also execute

 uname -r

so we know what version we are dealing with.
As certain OS levels are only optimized for 1Gb connections. So a 2.5Gb or faster link does nothing.

If you are not able to run these command add sudo in front of them or execute:

sudo -i

To get root access

 

[pvanosta]

on the laptop, ipconfig gives me this:

 

[Digilog]

on the laptop, ipconfig gives me this: View attachment 64185

in the NAS, where we change the 1Gb networking limits. Plz....

 

[pvanosta]

the other commands don't do anything useful in Windows. I'm guessing I need to run these on the NAS? When I try to ssh to the NAS, I get connection refused. This is where I reach the limit of my knowledge

 

[pvanosta]

I have just enabled ssh on the Nas and trying again

 

[pvanosta]

I am in via SSH. I am at the $ prompt. I type ipconfig and get command not found

 

[Digilog]

I am in via SSH. I am at the $ prompt. I type ipconfig and get command not found
View attachment 64186

ok, lets see if the other tools are loaded:

 ifconfig -a

See if any pre-routing is set, plus test the ip command:

 ip r

 

[pvanosta]

 

[pvanosta]

 

[Digilog]

View attachment 64187

Remove the bond, and disable the four gigabit ports as they will not be needed anymore.
Then reboot to set those changes,
then run ifconfing again to see where it maps the 10Gb port.
After this, we will try some different settings that are stock in the newer 10Gb network drivers of the kernel versions that these guys didn't port into their OS. Its a version of Linux, but trimmed and customized for Synology.

 

[Digilog]

If anyone else sees, the 10Gb port has been loaded with a 1Gb interface profile

We will try the generic intel 10Gb/2.5Gb profile first since this interface should be a 10G/2.5G type instead of the legacy 10Gb/1Gb interfaces

 

[Digilog]

if the other interfaces can't be disabled, then we adjust the interface (eth4) instead of trying to recover the 1MB per port of ram the other interfaces have tied up with buffering.

 ip link set eth4 mtu 9000 txqueuelen 2500

This will temporarily set a 10Gb profile. Next we will look into the link the system is reporting for it and driver it is using.
to find system link speed:

 cat /sys/class/net/eth4/speed