Another wrinkle in LAN File Transfer speeds

[gpwoodguy]

I could really use some help!! I am not very well versed in the finer points of LAN file transfers, so, I'm asking for some input on what may be wrong with my small network setup. Background: my network consists of several pc's - one with a Gbe LAN nic; other two have Fast LAN nic's (I have both of these offline currently); a Netgear GS608 Gbe switch; A Seagate Black Armor 110 NAS, Gbe capable; a D'Link DAP-1665 Wireless Access Point; and a Pace 3801 Router/modem (provided by AT&T - which I cannot change - unfortunately ) that has the wireless portion disabled. This whole investigation started with the addition of the DAP-1665 and a DWA-182 11ac adapter, as I wanted to upgrade my wireless speeds from 11g (provided by the AT&T box) to 11ac. After several frustrating weeks of troubleshooting the wireless side for slow file transfers, I went to benchmark my wired LAN speeds, and lo, here is where I ran into the real speed issues. After several false starts, poor testing protocols, more than a few wasted days, and a ton of research through multiple forums, I ended up purchasing "LAN Speed Test" from Totusoft that I found recommended elsewhere in this forum. To get to the basics, I have stripped down my network to three items: a Samsung i7 Chronos laptop running Win7/64 with Gbe NIC, the Netgear switch and the Seagate NAS (as my network storage device) - all hardwired with cat5e and/or cat 6 cables (tried several of each - none longer than 20'). When I run the LAN test program, IF I use the folder selection of a "mapped drive", i.e., reads "Z:\BACKUP", the Write speeds are consistently around 175Mbps and the read speeds are consistently around 260Mbps. IF I run the same exact test using the folder selection of "\\NETWORK-SERVER\Business\BACKUP", (which is the same location as the mapped drive location), my speeds fall to about half - Write = 85Mbps and Read = 112Mbps. As I see it, there seems to be a couple of issues - 1) The overall speeds of the Gbe network are slower than they should be. I realize that it'll never get anywhere near 1Gbps, but I would expect somewhere in the 600Mbps range for a wired connection; and 2) Why the difference in the two test protocols?

I have run these tests repeatedly with various settings on my nic, i.e., jumbo frames settings, offload settings, and a whole host of any other settings that I could find - no change. I have disabled "Autoscaling", and tried additional recommendations that I found in other forums. I even applied the Microsoft "Hotfix" for slow file transfers - again, no change. So, I am now at the limits of my meager knowledge and don't know what to do next. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Dennis Wood]

I would suggest several things.

1. Try the test using ip addresses only in your path: \\192.168.0.1\ backup to rule out a DNS issue.
2. Uninstall antivirus and reboot, test again. Depending on the product and configuration, mapped vs UNC may result in different scanning behavior from antivirus.
3. Turn off windows indexing/search.

Don't benchmark using the NAS as the drive and NAS itself is evidently slow. If possible, use a file share from another PC, and use a ramdrive on both to eliminate hard drive speed from the testing. 115 MB/s should be no problem. Once you have this baseline established, then start testing using hard drive etc, adding only one variable/test in as you test. This may help..all free tools: http://www.cinevate.com/blog/confessions-of-a-10-gbe-network-newbie-part-2-test-toolkit/

Any difference?

 

[gpwoodguy]

Hi Dennis -
Thanks for your response. I will tackle several of your suggestions today. I have been somewhat unsuccessful in getting another pc to do the throughput testing. Seems like everyone that I know has a pc, but are locked out of admin props (mostly these are business computers). The ones that I can get don't have a Gbe nic installed (of course!). I'm still trying on that front - someday, I will be successful.

I'll update as I get through this list. BTW, the toolkit that you link to is AWESOME!! Where was this 4 weeks ago?

 

[Dennis Wood]

You may want to check the entire series out...it's 10GbE focused but all of the technical stuff applies equally to 1GbE There is a lot of material there, but it covers just about everything you might encounter in terms of bottlenecks. Tim has these all six parts sorted and nicely edited: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/labels/10GbE

My experience so far though is that the largest bottlenecks for 1GbE would be hard drive speeds (where a single drive is used on a slow controller), or aggressive antivirus. The AV issues you can sometimes observe by running task manager during a file transfer and checking for any CPU hogs. IF you see AV pegging the computer at 100% CPU, you will know right away if that (or something else) is the culprit.

Using a program like SoftPerfect RAMdisk to create a "hard disk" in RAM still a good idea if you have any doubts that your PC hard drive is limiting speeds.

 

[chadster766]

Aside from Dennis's good recommendations the below also apply.

For best speed on a wired connection make sure your Ethernet adapter is PCI-E or built onto the motherboard. Standard PCI can't do true 1 Gigabit Ethernet.

For wireless AC technology on USB 3.0 or PCI-E with a good signal strength and low interference will get the highest performance.

 

[azazel1024]

One thing to keep in mind, its been awhile since I've looked at the Black Armor reviews, but I don't think it is nearly capable of saturating a gigabit link (my issue with most cheap NAS, they can't even take full advantage of the network link on big sequential file transfers).

That said, I think it should be capable of faster transfer than what you are seeing.

 

[gpwoodguy]

Final Analysis on my network

Many thanks to all who contributed to this thread!
Sorry it has taken so long to get back to everyone, but a number of things have transpired since my original post.

1st - LAN test - I had a devil of a time coming up with another pc that had a Gbe nic in it that was network accessible. I say this because I tried 4 computers from friends and associates, of which 3 were 'business' computers that had the appropriate Gbe lan card, but I couldn't use it to access my network. All of these were setup to only use the broadband function of my network so they would only connect with company servers - not much help! Not having administrator privileges left me unable to use them. The fourth one only had a 10/100 card. . My final resolution was something I should have thought about earlier. While my main pc is a Samsung i7 Chronos running Win7/64, my backup is an old HP dv-6000 dual Centrino running Vista (this translates to "r e a l l y s l o w"). In trying to figure out how to use it as my target pc, I was reviewing the specs and lo and behold, this pc has an Express54 card slot that is on the PCIe bus. So, I found a card on line (StarTech) that is a Gbe Express34 PCIe and bought it. I now had 2 usable pc's that had (supposed) Gbe capability. Now my testing could start in earnest, that is, pc to pc and not to my NAS. I dropped a note to Pete Totushek over at Totusoft.com to inquire about the best protocols to use. He commented that the first post from Dennis (above) had excellent suggestions. He also suggested that I use both LAN Speed Test AND the LST Server program (which I was not using earlier - just the LAN Speed Test part). I set up a ramdisk on my HP, but it has such minimal ram available, I could only set up a small disk. The problem subsequent to setting up the ramdisks that I couldn't overcome is that using the LAN Speed Test program, I couldn't target the ram drive on the other pc and couldn't figure out how to configure it - I kept getting connection/setup errors in the program. So, rather than continue spinning my wheels, I purchased the LST Server package and installed it on each pc. According to Pete, this setup eliminates the hard drives at each end - exactly what I needed. I set up the testing and started out with just the 2 pcs, hardwired to a new Netgear GS608 switch with everything else disconnected, using the ip addresses assigned by my router and it too, was disconnected for the testing. The results for this 'bare bones' setup (with multiple Cat 5e cables to eliminate those as a potential) gave me a range of low 400's to mid 500's Mbps (a lot lower than I would have expected for this setup). Since everything was new (except for the pc's), I attributed it to either the old HP lacking the horsepower to keep up or Win 7/64 which has had reported speed issues. I verified that all applicable drivers in both pc's were all current. Anyway, it gave me a baseline to work with such as it is. I re-ran these tests, bidirectionally, as each device was added back to the network until everything was re-connected. The test results for the fully loaded LAN weren't much different than the 'bare bones' results. By the way, all the testing was done with my antivirus and real-time file scanner turned off. Here is a link to the test log if interested: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9sg3aCLKxYjRkFPUktTV1JZWWs&usp=sharing

2nd - NAS - I added a second NAS to the network as I was concerned that the Seagate Black Armor, being a single drive unit, was potentially risky. I installed a Synology DS213j set up in a RAID1 configuration. This unit has much faster access since it has its own onboard CPU and 512MB of RAM. I now only use the Seagate to image the pc once a month, just in case. Also, I don't use it to test throughput speed anymore although it is 3X faster transferring a file than the Seagate

3rd - Wireless - I made changes in the wireless configurations which is what started this whole adventure! My original goal was to increase my wireless speed from my UVerse router/modem running at 54Mbps to the new .11ac speeds. I started by disabling the UVerse wireless and adding a D-Link DAP-1665 (AC1200 Dual Band) Access Point and corresponding WLAN Adapters on the pc end. First, I tried a Linksys adapter and couldn't get it to connect, and when it did, it ran slower than my internal WLAN card. Sent it back and obtained a D-Link DWA-182 1200ac adapter which worked somewhat. I spent a number of hours on the phone with D-Link Tech Support but could never get the device to connect above 290Mbps (it is touted to use USB3.0 speed, but it never connected to the hub at 3.0 - only 2.0 speed). They were the ones that suggested that there must be a problem with my LAN and/or computer. Following the testing of my LAN described above, further conversations with D-Link tech support with operational details, their final recommendation was to send the adapter back . They also verified that the unit is only USB2.0 capable and uses USB2.0 drivers. I sent it back and purchased a ASUS AC56 adapter and have been using it for the last week or so. Much better. The ASUS unit definitely runs at SuperSpeed on my USB3.0 hub and consistently reports connect speeds of 780 to 867Mbps running on the 5GHz band. Unfortunately the actual transfer rates are still only in the 150 - 200Mbps range.

Summary - While I'm disappointed in the reported LAN speeds for various setups, the issue appears to be pc based and not network based and since the hard drives on both machines were out of the loop for the testing, they aren't the source of the speed throttling that I am seeing. I may re-run this in the future with the virus scan programs (I use McAfee) completely removed versus turned off like Dennis previously recommended. Aside from that and the option to upgrade(?) both machines to Win8.1 (shiver), I really don't have anything else that I can do so I guess it really is "it is what it is".

Thanks everyone for your help.

 

[Samir]

Glad you got this all sorted out. I would have recommended using some linux live cds for testing as it eliminates all the windows issues. I've used iperf to diagnose connections as well. Solid little tester.