Settings for File Transfers for Gigabit Networks

[monkeylove]

My Linksys WRT120N router no longer works, so I bought a D-Link DIR-655, which has Gigabit ports.

I have a PC with Win 7 64-bit with an Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet built in the motherboard, an ASUS P5B-VM SE. I also have 4 GB of RAM and internal hard disks connected via SATA 2. The PC is connected to the router via a Cat 5 cable with the label "Type CM24AWG UL E188L30".

I also bought a Buffalo Linkstation Live LS-CHLV2 NAS with a 2 TB HD, and it's supposed to have a Gigabit port, too. The NAS is connected to the router via the Cat 5 cable included with the NAS.

I checked the settings of the Atheros, and it uses "auto" for the media type (other choices range from 10Mbps Half Duplex to 1000Mbps Full Duplex. The maximum frame size is 1514 (the default), and the receive and transmit buffers at 256. There is no "jumbo frame" property in the configurations.

The NAS only has frame size for the configuration, and it's currently set at 1518 (the default). Other options are 4102, 7422, and 9694 (all labeled as "jumbo" frame sizes).

I ran LAN Speed Test from the PC with a folder in the NAS as the destination, and the results for a 100-MB file are 34 Mbps for writing and 71 Mbps for reading.

I experimented by setting the Atheros media type to 1000Mbps Full Duplex and the maximum frame size to 9694. I went to the NAS and set the frame size to the highest, 9694. The transfer speed became worse.

I could not find any settings in the router except for MTU for Internet connections, but I think that's not used for network file transfers, so I did not change it (the default is 1500).

I would like to know if the system and components I have are supposed to be enough to do file transfers between the NAS and the PC that are faster than the results I've gotten.

Also, is it necessary to modify Ethernet configurations?

Finally, I do not what else to do except to do the LAN Speed test using the ff. options:

1. connect the NAS directly to the PC

2. connect to another PC, probably a laptop, that has Gigabit ethernet and is connected to the router

3. buy two cables that are identified for Gigabit networks and to replace the ones connecting the PC and the NAS to the router

Did I get this right?

 

[chev65]

There are no special settings required for a Gigabit network to run at full speed.

You can try going to Cat6 Ethernet cable but the slight speed increase is hardly noticeable.

I have the same D-Link DIR655 router as you do and it moves files plenty fast for me. It's probably one of the best routers on the market.

 

[TanyaC]

I too have a DIR-655. Actually, I'm on my fourth one in four years. They have all died with different problems, but regardless, for the load we throw at it, and the configuration options it has, I would still swear by it.

Read and write speeds are also affected by the type of drives installed in your NAS, not just your network infrastructure, but I guess I'm just stating the obvious.

I've also found that by tweaking some things on my computer I was able to speed things up; If you are a person that believes tweaking is evil, then you can ignore everything from this point on...

I used a test file of 1.09 GB. Initially, I was getting speeds are low at 3MB/s, but generally averaged 20 - 30 MB/s copying to a SATA 2 drive on my windows 2008 R2 server, and 25 - 35 MB/s to my SATA 3 drive.

1. Turn off remote differential compression; Tested again. My average write speed was now close to 100 MB/s with some copies topping 110MB /s

2. Turned off Auto-tuning; Tested again; My average write speed was now consistently over 110 MB/s for the sample file, and as high at 130 MB/s.

My read speeds from any drive are always over 100 MB/s, and as high as 128 MB/s. Prior to these two changes my best read speed was 93 MB/s.

Both of these changes are easily reversible if you find that they offer no improvements for you.

Perhaps these might be worth experimenting with if you are feeling adventurous

hth
Tanya

 

[chev65]

I too have a DIR-655. Actually, I'm on my fourth one in four years. They have all died with different problems, but regardless, for the load we throw at it, and the configuration options it has, I would still swear by it.

Read and write speeds are also affected by the type of drives installed in your NAS, not just your network infrastructure, but I guess I'm just stating the obvious.

I've also found that by tweaking some things on my computer I was able to speed things up; If you are a person that believes tweaking is evil, then you can ignore everything from this point on...

I used a test file of 1.09 GB. Initially, I was getting speeds are low at 3MB/s, but generally averaged 20 - 30 MB/s copying to a SATA 2 drive on my windows 2008 R2 server, and 25 - 35 MB/s to my SATA 3 drive.

1. Turn off remote differential compression; Tested again. My average write speed was now close to 100 MB/s with some copies topping 110MB /s

2. Turned off Auto-tuning; Tested again; My average write speed was now consistently over 110 MB/s for the sample file, and as high at 130 MB/s.

My read speeds from any drive are always over 100 MB/s, and as high as 128 MB/s. Prior to these two changes my best read speed was 93 MB/s.

Both of these changes are easily reversible if you find that they offer no improvements for you.

Perhaps these might be worth experimenting with if you are feeling adventurous

hth
Tanya

It's too bad my network adaptor doesn't have any of these settings. :sarc:


You went through 4 dir-655's in four years...wow!

I've had mine for years and the only thing I've ever had to do was reset it sometimes. I'm not sure how fast my network is but I can move 4GB movie files in 15 minutes.

 

[TanyaC]

They are actually windows settings, not adapter settings.

Yep, a power surge took out one, even on a surge protector that cost me $60. The DNS server in another died and they rapaired it, then it died again, so then they replaced it. And the last one just wouldn't work at all. So they replaced that too

Their RMA service has been excellent. Their technical support isn't up to the same standard <sigh>

I guess we all get used to different things. For me, I'd get quite frustrated having to wait 15 minutes to move/copy 4GB of data.

 

[monkeylove]

Thanks for the help. I just realized that I saw similar problems, i.e., sometimes the speed was fast, and sometimes it was not. Using Cat 6 cables might have also helped. Also, I found out that if the NAS doesn't have a very powerful CPU, then file speeds might not be as fast.

 

[pparks1]

I ran LAN Speed Test from the PC with a folder in the NAS as the destination, and the results for a 100-MB file are 34 Mbps for writing and 71 Mbps for reading.

Did you mean to write this as 34 MegaBITS per second (Mbps), or did you mean 34Megabytes per second. (MB/s)

I experimented by setting the Atheros media type to 1000Mbps Full Duplex and the maximum frame size to 9694. I went to the NAS and set the frame size to the highest, 9694. The transfer speed became worse.

In order to use jumbo frames, you have to enable jumbo frame support on all devices on the network that are communicating together. Thus, you have enable jumbo frame support on your PC, on your router/switch and on your NAS. As you experienced, having it partially on will actually make things worse.

I would like to know if the system and components I have are supposed to be enough to do file transfers between the NAS and the PC that are faster than the results I've gotten.

The maximum speed that you will see on a gigabit network theoretically is about 125MB/sec. However, with ethernet overhead, expect that you will only hit about 80% of the theoretical max, so you are looking at around 100MB/sec.

In most cases, the limiting factor of file transfer speeds is the speed of the hard drives in the system. Most modern mechanical hard drives (~2009-2012) are going to have transfer rates around the 70MB/sec range. They can burst faster at the start, but as a longer transfer progresses, and dependent upon fragmentation and the location of the data on the drive, these speeds can drop to rates of around 30-40MB/sec.

The next thing is the implementation of SMB that is being used. For example, a copy from a Windows 7 box (which uses SMB2) to a Windows XP box (which doesn't use SMB2) is much slower than a copy from a Windows 7 device to a Windows 7 device. Same thing goes for file transfers to a Windows Server 2003 from that same Windows 7 host. However, from a SMB2 device to another SMB2 device is much faster. SMB2 is in Vista, Win7 and 2008/2008R2. So, depending upon the support from your NAS device, you may or may not fully utilize this additional speed.

I recently put together a new file server at home. I decided to run Windows 7 on the file server box to ensure SMB 2 support and fast file transfers from my Windows 7 desktop. My server has an onboard 1Gbps interface from my Intel mobo (DH67CL), the CPU is a core i3-2100t, and my hard drives are the 2TB Samsung EcoGreen 5,400 RPM drives. From my desktop, or my laptop, which both run SSD drives, large file transfers (2GB or larger ISO files) to my server, my copy times start out around 75MB/sec and finish around 45-50MB/sec. I'm absolutely delighted with this performance as is everything (and more) that I suspected from my "green" drives that I choose to use.


So, I would say that if you are getting ~35MB/sec (megabytes per second), across your gigabit network to your NAS that's probably about right. On a 100Mbps network, you would only see speeds of 8MB/sec to 11MB/sec...so you are getting 3-4x that.


Edit: It appears after some Google Kungfu, that the NAS device you have maxes out around 40MB/sec.
http://forums.buffalotech.com/t5/St...S-CHL-v2-Speeds-on-Gigabit-network/td-p/91744
http://www.buffalotech.com/products/network-storage/