NASLite Network Attached Storage

When I'm dumping info onto my naslite server, the trasnfer speed is never constant, it will go fast and then drop to zero and go fast again, it repeats this over and over. I looked on the system page and found this:

RX packets:12456912 errors:3 dropped:56881 overruns:2 frame:0
TX packets:6512582 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

So it seems the NasLite box is dropping a lot of packets. Is there any way to fix this problem by tweeking the network setting somehow?

Though transfering from the NasLite is a constant speed, albeit slower.

Mike

btw its a P1 233MMX, 64MB ram and a 160GB WD 7200 HDD.

That's an interesting observation. Could be a driver issue, a network card issue, a PCI bus issue, etc. Some benchmarking may shed some light. This isn't scientiffic by any means since the hardware type and quality can vary so much, but here is an idea. Transfer 1M, 10M and 100M file to and from NASLite and record the transfer times. Post the results along with your NASLite hardware stats (type of NIC, MB, RAM, etc.)

Anyone is welcome to post some stats, The more data, the more accurate the results, so have at it

1mb file, i could not time properly <1sec
10mb file was about 1-2 secs
100mb file was 37 secs

On a few other tests I average about 3700 KB/s peaking at 8000KB/s or so. But as you can see in the following picture that speed is not constant. The middle bar is when I was transfering data from my windows box to my Linux box and as you can see it is constant. Maybe some sort of buffering issue? More ram is needed perhaps? Any ideas?


Specs:
P1 233MMX with an unknown motherboard
64MB ram
160GB WD 8MB cache
D-Link DFE-538TX

All,

I'm seeing bursty transfer rates as well when copy large files to my NASLite box. From what I can tell, it looks like transfers go quickly until the buffer memory on the NAS box is exhausted, then pauses until part of the buffer is written to disk. I would bet that the transfer rate, when averaged over a long enough time span, would work out to be whatever the write speed of the IDE bus is.

Anyway, for comparison, here are the specs for my NASLite box:

P2 (Deschutes) running at 450 MHz
128 MB of PC100 SDRAM
Western Digital 7200 RPM 120 GB w/ 8 Megs of cache

Here's a snapshot of the network traffic from my machine to the NAS box. It tops out at around 10 MB/second.




Here is what the NAS System tab reports about the NIC:
Network Interface

RealTek RTL8139 at 0xc8800000, **:**:**:**:**:**, IRQ 10
Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'
link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr **:**:**:**:**:**
inet addr:192.168.0.10 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:28268676 errors:5024 dropped:69986 overruns:4279 frame:0
TX packets:14666638 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3238719337 (3.0 GiB) TX bytes:1023687483 (976.2 MiB)
Interrupt:10

I see the exact same type of transfer rate. I have noticed that several of us are using the same network chipset RTL8139. I am using a DFE-530TX+ (which is a realtek RTL8139). I believe that the DFE-538TX also uses a realtek RTL8139 chipset also. Could there be a driver issue with this chipset or is it a coincidence?

I think you may be right. I had an RTL8139 sitting in one of my box-o-goods, so I tried it out. Sure enough - transfer rate looks the same. It is most likely a driver issue.

The driver obviously is the one that ships with the kernel. I'll do some research and see if there are any improvements that can be made without too much trouble.

If anyone can shed some light on this, it will be appreciated.

I Had to move my hardware to a different box because of an upgrade. I used a different Motherboard and made sure I didn't use a Realtek card. I used an Intel Pro100. Even with the new configuration I still get the Wacked out transfer rates.
Configuration is: generic intel 810 Motherboard, Celeron 500 cpu, 128MB ram, wd60gb hdd, wd40gb hdd, wd120gb hdd, and Intel pro100 NIC.

I am a fan of the Realtek 8139 100mb chipset due to its affordability, reliability and wide driver support. However in addition to its poor performance with NASLite I have also observed the chipset is dismal under FreeBSD and other flavors of linux. Oddly enough it is faster under Windows 98, go figure... In any case switching to a different ether card doubled my samba throughput under FreeBSD.

Just what is the whole network setup? It could be that your network topogrophy is causing a problem.

Many people put hubs in their networks that cause a lot of collisions and slow things down. I hook mine all directly to the router, and while I've not tested my transfer rates, I don't notice a problem.

If you're out of router ports (assuming a home DSL/router setup) buy a cheap switch. they're faster than a hub, as you won't have collisions.

Hope this helps.

Tim

same problem here with doubtfull speeds (no pakket loss though)

in another topic of mine i also asked about this, and it was done with an answer like "its old hardware, what can you expect"

my config is:
pentium100, 128mb ram, 160gb maxtor
the ide channel is supposed to get dma33 mode (being 33mb max)

so the drive nor the ide device can be the problem
nonetheless i also have very poor speedresults.."buffers running full" (does indeed look like it)
max transfer speed is about 2mb/sec
the lancard is an intel pro/100

transfer from one pc to another gives me ranges from 4 to 8mb/sec
to the naslite only the 2mb

reading al other personal experiences here gives me a bad feeling
(somethings wrong in the naslite stuff)

i sincerely hope that problem gets cleared up, cause naslite is awsome for the rest of it

[edit] concerning problable problems with routers i will test my setup by unhooking all pc's from the router and try a direct connection from a pc to the naslite box

note: maybe my problem has to do with the naslite having statip ip while the router uses dhcp for the pc's (naslite being out of the dhcp adres range though)

Losha,

Most routers have a setting for reserving a specific IP address so that it's DHCP server doesn't step all over it. See if you can get yours to reserve the NASLite box's IP, and then test the speed.

Tim

Gigabit switch for 15 bucks: GigaFast EZ500-S

I haven't used one of these, or frankly even heard of GigaFast before, but it's such an interesting deal, and tdreste mentioned getting a "cheap switch"... you don't get much cheaper than this one!

i connected naslite direct to another pc (without router..by crosscable)
didnt make any difference..so router is also not the problem

[edit]
tryed another system as server now (pentium 133 64mb)
still barely above 2mb/sec

now i tried my cinema system (athlon 800, 384mb ram)
speeds are even worse (realtek 8139d ..go figure..under windows its fine on same machine)

this is freaking me out...

why is the naslite-server so much slower then copying from windows boxes to each other

to sum it up:

tried 3 different systems
several different disks
2 different nic's (some pakketloss on realtek no pakketloss on 3com/intel pro)
different cables
with/without router

always 2mb/sec tops (real top on download, mostly just about 1,8mb/sec, average top upload..will go higher first then plunge way down and stay down)

if their's an error in the compiled kernel i am willing to help find it, as far as i can under linux (just not my thing..i'm more into windows..sorry )

getting quiet in here...
anyone found out anything yet? these speeds are horrible...
i am almost thinking about making a windows server-box (just almost )

exactly WHAT is different in the smb and smbG version of naslite (concerning ide)

i really don't want to buy a gigabit nic just because the smbG version has better ide support (my whole network is 100mbit, so one gigabit card would be just for the show)
but frankly i (and for all i can read/see in this topic i am not the only one)
don't think the speeds some of us are getting are normal
not even for dma/33 (1,6mb/sec upload just doesnt feel right)

is there (somewhere not public..or by mail)
a version of smbG that works with 100mbit nic's ?

i'm getting desperate

i played around with a knoppix cd and i probably found out whats wrong with (at least my) transfer rates

it looks alot like naslite is setting my drive only at (singleword) dma1, which gives an theoretical transferrate of 2.1mb/sec (well..never got over 2mb..)
while the hardware (a digital3000 pc) has (multiword)dma3(dma33) support

under knoppix, curiously enough, i couldn't change the drives parameters (hdparm)
it would state the change, but after checking it was still at dma1 (different pc btw...kt7a..which has ata66 support)

is there a way i can see ecxactly what naslite is setting the drive(s) at?
and is there a way to change the settings? (without getting crc errors )

[edit]
i already tried connecting the drive on a promise ultra100 tx2
allthough idechannels were disabled in bios, naslite did not see the drive on the promise card (but then again the whole ultra thing isn't really supported and tested..so...