LAN Throughput Speeds - Slow?

[dmn1981]

Hi All,

New to the forum, and hopefully someone can help or confirm what I am seeing is right.

I'm currently transferring my music, pictures, films etc between NAS devices, as a back up for resilience.

I've got it set up as follows:

NAS 1 -> Ethernet Cable -> 10/100/1000 Switch -> Ethernet Cable -> NAS 2

Both NAS devices use 10/100/1000 ports, and the switch confirms that each connection is 1Gb/s, as both lights are on each port.

Now I know that 1Gb/s should give you around 125MB/s throughput (1000/8 = 125MB/s. Now I know this is theoretical, based on cable length, whether its CAT5, CAT5e etc etc..

I'm using CAT5e cables, and the sync program that I am using to sync the files between the NAS devices is showing an average transfer rate of 1.2MB/s?!

This seems extremely slow, and even at 100Mb/s links, I should be getting around 8MB/s throughput?

Am I missing something, or is there something else I need to check?

Connected to all of this is obviously my router (SkyHub), now this only has 10/100 ethernet ports, and I have only connect the Router to one network devices, which is the Switch, so it can serve out IP addresses to everything connected to it. By doing it this way, the transfer of files between the NAS devices doesn't need to traverse the routers 10/100 switch, and so each NAS device talks to each other via a single NetGear 10/100/1000 switch in the middle.

Hope this makes sense? Any help or guidance would be appreciated!

Thanks

Darren

 

[htismaqe]

What is the make/model of each NAS?

 

[dmn1981]

What is the make/model of each NAS?

One is a WD MYCLOUD 4TB and one is the WD TV LIVE HUB, i'm just using the 1TB disk for now, until I get another WD MYCLOUD 4TB NAS

 

[rototiller]

Yes, it depends on the NAS used...I have 2 on my network, one is a Synology and the other is a Dlink. Both are connected via ethernet @ 1 Gb/s speed. My upload speeds to my Synology varies from 42 MB/s to 50 MB/s. My upload speeds to my Dlink varies from 800 KB/s to 3 MB/s. Guess which NAS I use most? HA!

 

[dmn1981]

That doesn't really answer my question, other than it could be one on my NAS devices!

 

[azazel1024]

That doesn't really answer my question, other than it could be one on my NAS devices!

I think he kind of semi did. It is likely one of your NAS that is the bottleneck, not your actual network. Without knowing the NAS, I can't really offer suggestions on what if any settings you might tinker with to improve throughput. At a guess something is going on with SMB and both devices that is causing a big slow down. However, what if any settings are exposed by either NAS, I couldn't tell you. Get in their management pages and try tinkering.

Also you could try plugging a computer in there and seeing what transfer speeds you get to each one individually. If one flips up as really slow compared to the other, there is your answer. If both perform fine, then some kind of incomptibility between the two of them (again, I'd suspect on the SMB level).

That said, no idea what is in the WD TV LIVE HUB, but if it is remotely like my old Seagate Free Agent Theater+ that I had for awhile (which doesn't have NAS support turned on, but you can through the console)...it is PAINFULLY slow at reading and writing to an attached disk. It can buffer video across the network pretty well (vague timing of around 3-4MB/sec), but actually reading and writing to storage is only around 1-2MB/sec.

 

[htismaqe]

That doesn't really answer my question, other than it could be one on my NAS devices!

Actually, he was indirectly answering your question. That's precisely why I asked what kind of NAS you are using - because more than likely, it's one of the NAS boxes that is producing the problem.

 

[dmn1981]

Hi.

I was going to run the test suggested anyway, which I've just done. I connected my laptop to the switch by Ethernet, and then did a read/write lan speed test to both NAS boxes, throughput results:

WD MyCloud:
7.2MB / 6.3MB (R/W)

WD TVLive Hun:
6.3MB / 5.8MB (R/W)

This is more in line with what I would expect from a 10/100 connection, which is what my laptop was connected at, with a theoretical Max of 12.5MB/s, so not too bad.

Something seems a miss between the 2 NAS boxes, especially when they are both connected at 1Gbs link speed?!

Any ideas?

Darren

 

[azazel1024]

Actually both results are well below what a 100Mbps connection should supply. That would be around 11-11.8MB/sec, depending on the adapter in question.

So they are both still fairly slow. Honestly, the result of both pushes me in the direction of two slow NAS's attempting to pass information to each other. Depending on what is causing the bottleneck on each, it could be resulting in the very slow transfers between them (slower than from your laptop to either).

It could be a protocol incompatibility in one of them. Maybe the WD TV is running SMB1.0 (lots and lots of older "NAS" type products run only 1.0, which is terrible) and the MyCloud doesn't like 1.0. Dunno.