Yet another Network/NAS speed question

[nasoz]

I have a Dell laptop running Windows XP Professional and using a Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller which is set to Auto (and according to the documentation this should be running at Gigabit speeds which seems to be borne out by other tests I have done on this laptop)

I am transferring files from this to my NAS which is a MSI Wind barebones PC using a 1TB WD Caviar Green HDD. This setup should have a Realtek RTL8111C PCI-E Gigabit LAN card built in according to the specs. I am using a version of FreeNAS on it that supports this driver (because the 'current' version does not)

Both the laptop and NAS are connected in a wired manner thru a Netgear GS608 Gigabit switch which is connected to a Linksys WRT610N 'N' router. The one thing you should be aware of is that there is also an older Netgear Wireless G router that I have converted into an Access Point that is wired directly into the WRT610N.

This was a long preamble to the actual issue : I tested the network transfer speed between my laptop and the NAS using Jperf (on the laptop) and Iperf (on the NAS). Regardless of any changes I make to the TCP Window Size or other parameters, I get a constant speed of 93 Mbits/sec. I have also enabled the fine tuning options on FreeNAS.

From whatever I have read on this site, this transfer speed is missing a couple of zeros. Anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this lower transfer rate ?

thanks

 

[nasoz]

Follow up

I just ran the same test using the MBps output format on Jperf and realized that I am getting 11.2 MB/s - reading other threads, this is the limit for a 100Mbps network.
So obviously, something somewhere is not performing at Gigabit speed. Any thoughts on how to best test this ?

 

[Madwand]

Check the lights on the GS608 -- I think they're yellow when linked at 100 Mb/s, and green when linked at 1000 Mb/s. If you're getting a yellow link on a gigabit NIC, try pushing in the connector a bit harder / using a new cable / or even just power cycling the switch. If that gets you nowhere, try using some of the ports directly on the WRT610N.

Of course, also check the drivers and settings in the NIC properties on the workstations if you have a link speed issue and swapping ports / switches / cables doesn't fix it. Auto-negotiation should be fine and is generally preferred, but if it's just not working, then you could try any other available options.

 

[valentin]

You may also try a different set of network cables - it might be that you are using 4-wire cables, good for 100MBit connection, but not for gigabit
________
NX250

 

[nasoz]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have found out that while FreeNAS identifies the NIC driver, it is using it at 100Mbps - even if I explicitly set it to work at 1000Mbps (instead of Autoselect), the status shows it working at 100 Mbps.


I have tried searching for this issue - while a couple of people have reported similar slow speeds for this combination of FreeNAS + Driver, no one seems to have resolved it yet.

If anyone has an answer on how to solve this, that would be very helpful

 

[00Roush]

Probably not the answer you want to hear... Get a different network card.

Are you using the latest version of FreeNAS? You might also be able to set the speed at the command line. I can't remember off the top of my head what the command was... Ethtool maybe. Looks like the driver is working just fine for 100 Mbit speeds so if you can get the speed changed to 1000 Mbit it might work also. If you are using the web interface to change your speeds it might not work as you are using a modified version of FreeNAS. So you might need to change it at the command line.

You could try using Ubuntu Server as it might have better driver support.

00Roush