SMB over VPN on fiber internet super slow.

[domic]

A family members' RT-AC86U with Merlin firmware 386.1_2 doesn't provide good speeds when transferring files from his network shared hard drives (plugged into the router via USB).
I set the entire router and home "cloud" up for them.

LAN speeds are fine, internet speed is 600 Mbit down/50 Mbit up, coaxial connection. Internet connection is bridged to the Asus router.

FTP/SFTP when using the built in VPN server using PPTP (I know, I know, but let's not talk about the security for now)
The FTP over VPN speeds can so far in my speedtests reach 2-3 MB/s across LTE/4G connection,
BUT the SMB over VPN speeds are terrible, at always around 300-600 kB/s. I've tried both SMB1 and SMB2 and it's the same result.

Why are they so slow and what can I do to fix it?
Is SMB3 any better and is it available for AsusWRT-Merlin?

We'd both like the family member to keep using SMB for all their file transfers, both at home and remotely (over VPN).
(I haven't updated the router firmware because I have to read the changelogs before changing any configuration on the device. Systems work the longest the less you touch touch the configs.

Any solutions?

 

[L&LD]

Data on USB drives connected to the (underpowered) router and going over a VPN.

I wouldn't expect too much here.

Are transfers any faster from a computer with a shared folder?

This may be the limit of the various links between their remote locations' ISP speeds, the VPN, and the USB drive, and back out through their ISP too.

What devices are doing the transfers? What kind of files (and sizes)?

 

[itpp20]

Plenty of solutions to try: https://www.google.nl/search?q=optimize+smb+over+vpn
Winscp over scp(ssh) would be the best option, smb was never designed for this.
Eventhough I use smb over ssh for a robocopy session with a low mtu, this works for its purpose.

 

[papypaprika]

A family members' RT-AC86U with Merlin firmware 386.1_2 doesn't provide good speeds when transferring files from his network shared hard drives (plugged into the router via USB).
I set the entire router and home "cloud" up for them.

LAN speeds are fine, internet speed is 600 Mbit down/50 Mbit up, coaxial connection. Internet connection is bridged to the Asus router.

FTP/SFTP when using the built in VPN server using PPTP (I know, I know, but let's not talk about the security for now)
The FTP over VPN speeds can so far in my speedtests reach 2-3 MB/s across LTE/4G connection,
BUT the SMB over VPN speeds are terrible, at always around 300-600 kB/s. I've tried both SMB1 and SMB2 and it's the same result.

Why are they so slow and what can I do to fix it?
Is SMB3 any better and is it available for AsusWRT-Merlin?

We'd both like the family member to keep using SMB for all their file transfers, both at home and remotely (over VPN).
(I haven't updated the router firmware because I have to read the changelogs before changing any configuration on the device. Systems work the longest the less you touch touch the configs.

Any solutions?

Hi @domic,

I just tested the remote transfer of a 1GB movie from my SMB3 server sitting at home (on my RT-AX86U), through OpenVPN (server on the same router), the transfer rate showed by my remote Windows client was 5MB/s which I believe is c.40Mb/s. Not too far off my current max upload speed at home (50Mb/s).

I did install SMB3 through entware, it works well.

 

[domic]

Hi @domic,

I just tested the remote transfer of a 1GB movie from my SMB3 server sitting at home (on my RT-AX86U), through OpenVPN (server on the same router), the transfer rate showed by my remote Windows client was 5MB/s which I believe is c.40Mb/s. Not too far off my current max upload speed at home (50Mb/s).

I did install SMB3 through entware, it works well.

Did SMB3 require any additional configuration after installing it through the package manager? This router doesn't have entware installed yet.

 

[papypaprika]

Did SMB3 require any additional configuration after installing it through the package manager? This router doesn't have entware installed yet.

You need to tweak the smb.conf file to reflect your “shares”.

On my side, I simply copied the smb.conf file created by the built-in samba server (from the firmware), and adjusted couple of parameters.