Need help speeding up my office network

[LSDC]

I have a small dental office with a small network of Windows 7 (32-bit) computers. In total there are 4 workstations. One of the workstations is a wireless laptop and the other three are directly wired into a router (each about 25 feet apart in different rooms). In addition to the workstations, I have 3 wireless printers and a wired in Western Digital MyBookWorld external drive connected to the router.
My router is a Belkin Wireless Play Router (F7D4302). Also worth mentioning is that my internet service provider is Comcast/Xfinity cable.
Each of the workstations has dental office management software that accesses data which is stored on the MyBookWorld external hard drive. This is the life force of the practice – the data going back and forth between the hard drive and the workstations.
My problem is that the connection speed seems quite slow when reading and writing data to and from the workstations. I do not want to make any changes to the actual workstations. How can I boost the read/write and data transfer speed to my workstations? If I need to reconfigure my setup or upgrade my router or external drive, or internet provider - I am up for that.
Please help.

 

[Fireradier]

I am certainly not an expert here, but at first glance it appears you are bottle-necked at the router since its not a gigabit connection, and also at your external hard drive since its running through a 2.0 USB port on the router.
I don't know what program you are using but I assume from my last dentist office visit you are also frequently reading and writing large picture files (x-rays).
My experience is with a medical program called Allscripts that likes to put all (pt history etc)the information on the local machine first before it shows you anything. Your program may be considerably less complicated though.
I would purchase a much better router. And since you are on this site, look into one that RMerlin supports with his very nice firmware, just in case you decide to get fancy down the road.

 

[L&LD]

Without seeing the network actual running, I would recommend an RT-N66U if you were running mainly in the 2.4GHz band (without any problems) and at least a 4 Bay NAS such as a QNAP TS469L or higher.

If you are relying on the 5GHz band, I would be considering an RT-AC56U or even an RT-AC68U at this point (depending on the budget you have).


Although I suggest a QNAP NAS, a Synology 4 Bay model will be just as appropriate.

The reason for the 4 Bay is simply for speed: fill up the bays with 2, 3, or 4TB drives and watch your network come alive (especially when/if everyone accesses the data at the same time).


A USB attached external drive to a router is a sure fire way to slow speeds (especially for multiple users).


If you do consider a NAS, your router may not be to be changed if you already have GB ports on it (and the wireless performance is to your satisfaction in other areas than connecting to the USB Drive).


Keep in mind that when you get the NAS up and running, the current USB drive can be used for doing backups of the NAS.

 

[LSDC]

"A USB attached external drive to a router is a sure fire way to slow speeds (especially for multiple users)."

Can you explain the difference between attaching a USB hard drive to a router and attaching a USB NAS to the router? Obviously, this is where my problems lie - not having a full understanding of the differences.

Thanks.

 

[L&LD]

There is no USB NAS: NAS is Network Attached Storage, i.e. GB Ethernet connection or higher.

USB ports on a NAS are there to backup the contents of the NAS to an external HDD for offsite storage (ideally).

There is no way to use the USB ports to 'share' your data contained within the NAS.


If a NAS is marketed as such with USB connectivity; stay away. This is toy-land.

Multiple HDD's and RAID5 capability do not provide a backup as such - but they do allow you to fully saturate a 1GB Ethernet connection, especially for multiple users concurrently. A single HDD can hit over 150MB/s with large files transferred - put a few of those together in RAID5 and you'll be able to service quite a few clients concurrently with each receiving more bandwidth than a single user does now with the USB attached drive. Especially if the data requested from the NAS will be smaller (rather than larger) files.


Also keep in mind that when USB 2.0 came out it was touted as fast or faster than FireWire. And technically, it was. But the protocol overhead of USB can make the older technology faster than even USB 3.0 in some cases. Especially with small files and single HDD's such as in a USB enclosure. And especially when latency is an issue (think audio or video editing).

While 1GB Ethernet still has overhead; it is at least an order of magnitude better than any USB connections we can make to a router at this time.


The main point is that a NAS is not USB connected, as that is not a NAS at all (no matter what the marketing material may suggest on the box).

 

[abailey]

"A USB attached external drive to a router is a sure fire way to slow speeds (especially for multiple users)."

Can you explain the difference between attaching a USB hard drive to a router and attaching a USB NAS to the router? Obviously, this is where my problems lie - not having a full understanding of the differences.

Thanks.

Your NAS will not be USB. Your NAS should connect to your network with an Ethernet connection (or 2, that really needs to be 1Gbit/s).

 

[Dennis Wood]

Your router has 10/100 LAN ports so at best 12 MB/s is what your workstations will see. That's slooooow.

1. Either replace your router with one that has gigabit LAN ports, or invest $100 in an eight port gigabit switch and connect to your router with a cat5 cable.

2. Your workstations almost certainly have gigabit Ethernet onboard...if not, a gigabit NIC is inexpensive.

3. Invest in a 2 drive NAS (at minimum) like this http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31854-qnap-ts-269-pro-nas-reviewed and purchase 2 WD RED hard drives for it. Plug the NAS into your gigabit switch.

4. Use your WD for backup.

Do the above and your workstations will access data at 100MB/s instead of 8MB/s. Under $800 to do all of the above. Consider what would happen if this NAS is stolen, or damaged in a fire. If the answer is "we'd be very sad", then you might purchase two NAS units and set one up at your home office. Qnap, symbology etc all support remote rsync backup. Once set up, automated scheduled backups would replicate your customer data nightly, weekly etc. to your offsite NAS.

Cheers,
Dennis.