Upgraded to gigabit switch, now my read speeds are terrible.

goldfinger · **Joined:** Tue Feb 14, 2006 10:20 pm **Posts:** 14

I was maxing out my 100Mbps ethernet switch to the NASLite box, so I decided to purchase a gigabit switch (Fiberdyne VS-G510) to get a little bit more speed out of it. Both my desktop and the NASLite auto negotiate to 1000Mbps full duplex. I was getting a consitant 80-90% throughput on both reads and writes.

But after installing the gigabit switch my read speeds through SMB are terrible. I have attached a screenshot of what it plummets to.

Write speeds seem to be in the 10-14MB/sec range, which is acceptable. I can even get 10-14MB/sec over FTP and 20MB/sec reads over HTTP. But SMB (which is what I use most) is creeping. The same file I can write in 4 minutes takes 44 minutes to transfer back the other way!

My desktop speed should not be an issue. 10K RPM Raptor, 2GB Ram, Core 2 Duo E6400. NIC is a Marvell Yukon 88E8056 (onboard) using the latest driver.

Here is the NAS info:
eth0: Identified chip type is 'RTL8169s/8110s'.
eth0: RTL8169 at 0xd8806c00, 00:06:4f:25:8e:4d, IRQ 10
eth0: Auto-negotiation Enabled.
eth0: 1000Mbps Full-duplex operation.

CPU: PIII 1.2GHz
384MB RAM

Any ideas?

Ralph · **Posted:** Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:11 pm

Use good quality cat6 ethernet cables. Bad cables will affect speed and latency.

goldfinger · **Joined:** Tue Feb 14, 2006 10:20 pm **Posts:** 14

Would that affect only the SMB transfers? My HTTP and FTP speeds are as they should be. I would think if it was bad cables that all services would suffer. I have all short runs of CAT5e. If all speeds were that terrible I think I could blame the cables, but they aren't.

My HTTP/FTP transfers are consistant with this:

Transferring over SMB I can't get 1mbps.

goldfinger · **Joined:** Tue Feb 14, 2006 10:20 pm **Posts:** 14

I thought I would post what I finally did to fix this issues in case it happens to someone else.

After trying everything else possible I ended up purchasing an Intel PRO/1000 MT adapter since it was highly regarded on this forum. My transfers through mapped network drives are now a stable 20-22% utilization which I am very happy with. FTP and HTTP are 35MB/sec plus.

All transfers are much more stable.

superboss · **Joined:** Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:32 pm **Posts:** 290

goldfinger wrote:

I thought I would post what I finally did to fix this issues in case it happens to someone else.

After trying everything else possible I ended up purchasing an Intel PRO/1000 MT adapter since it was highly regarded on this forum. My transfers through mapped network drives are now a stable 20-22% utilization which I am very happy with. FTP and HTTP are 35MB/sec plus.

All transfers are much more stable.

Realtek 8169S is what is used on Netgear GA311 which I thought was an 'ok' card (although I'm not a fan of Realtek personally). Glad to hear you got things running well in the end though

rsvr_mille · **Joined:** Wed Feb 21, 2007 8:43 am **Posts:** 3

Whilst I understand the solution you chose for this issue, buying more hardware, I don't think this is the right solution. I don't believe this is a hardware issue, it looks like a software issue.

Its quite obvious that we can state a few things here.
1) the cables and the switches are working fine as proved by transfer rates with other protocols.
2) the realtek chip in the card (or other cards) also works as it is handling the other protocols fine (and Naslite seems to be fine also)
3) there seems to be an issue with naslite using the realtek chip as found on netgear cards on gigabit networks but not on 100mb networks
4) you're not the only customer with a realtek chip or indeed the very same netgear ga311 pci card having the same issue on gigabit networks. See the naslite-cdd forum under frequent osx problems....

Solution.
The solution to this is it needs to be investigated by the support for naslite. This clearly looks like a software issue in naslite, it can cope with smb on 100mb but not 1000mb......It also works on 1000mb as long as you have the intel card......
Now given that there are a few customers with this issue, and potentially many more as people upgrade to gigabit networks (which is a smart move given what alot of people will use this product for - storage of photos, music, video etc), we would like some support please.

Whilst I understand that naslite isn't designed to work with every hardware combination, I don't think its acceptable to shrugg this off and tell people to buy the intel card. We've all put our faith in this product and committment to it as most of us have bought it. Its easier to sort out the software than have every customer go and buy intel hardware......

superboss · **Joined:** Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:32 pm **Posts:** 290

The intel card is not the ultimate fix either.. see:

http://www.serverelements.com/phpBB2/vi ... 46c52f4ed3

gaiden · **Posted:** Thu Feb 22, 2007 8:39 am

I am using Naslite V2.05 on USB.
With A GA311 Netgear Card (RTL8169s) in the server.
The Windows machine is again using the GA311 card
These are connected via a Netgear GS605 gig Switch.
cables are Cat6.

I do not have the same problem and never had.

Code:

D:\Nas Server\Diskwiggler\eden>diskwriggler -PAL -C -t -n 2000 -o \\Naslite\D
isk-0
Frame Resolution  : 720 x 576
Bytes / Pixel     : 2.00 (packed) (8 bit, 4:2:2 sampling)
Frame Size        : 829,440 bytes
File Type         : All frames in one container file (1,658,880,000 bytes).

Writing 2000 x 829440 byte frames into file \\Naslite\Disk-0/framestream.dat
173 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 34.47 FPS (27.27 MB/s)
140 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 27.91 FPS (22.08 MB/s)
 96 frames in 5.00 secs ==> 19.18 FPS (15.17 MB/s)
159 frames in 5.01 secs ==> 31.76 FPS (25.13 MB/s)
142 frames in 5.00 secs ==> 28.39 FPS (22.46 MB/s)
156 frames in 7.68 secs ==> 20.31 FPS (16.07 MB/s)
128 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 25.52 FPS (20.18 MB/s)
125 frames in 5.01 secs ==> 24.95 FPS (19.74 MB/s)
138 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 27.52 FPS (21.77 MB/s)
133 frames in 5.01 secs ==> 26.52 FPS (20.98 MB/s)
166 frames in 5.01 secs ==> 33.12 FPS (26.20 MB/s)
 65 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 12.94 FPS (10.24 MB/s)
160 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 31.86 FPS (25.20 MB/s)
 89 frames in 5.37 secs ==> 16.57 FPS (13.11 MB/s)
130 frames in 4.86 secs ==> 26.75 FPS (21.16 MB/s)

Write Summary : 2000.00 frames in 78.09 secs
              :   12.94(min)   25.61(avg)   34.47(max) FPS
              :   10.24(min)   20.26(avg)   27.27(max) MB/s

Reading 2000 x 829440 byte frames from file \\Naslite\Disk-0/framestream.dat
 74 frames in 5.04 secs ==> 14.69 FPS (11.62 MB/s)
108 frames in 5.00 secs ==> 21.60 FPS (17.08 MB/s)
 94 frames in 5.01 secs ==> 18.78 FPS (14.85 MB/s)
 72 frames in 5.08 secs ==> 14.18 FPS (11.22 MB/s)
 46 frames in 5.06 secs ==> 9.09 FPS (7.19 MB/s)
111 frames in 5.03 secs ==> 22.05 FPS (17.45 MB/s)
106 frames in 5.08 secs ==> 20.85 FPS (16.49 MB/s)
111 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 22.11 FPS (17.49 MB/s)
101 frames in 5.05 secs ==> 19.99 FPS (15.81 MB/s)
109 frames in 5.07 secs ==> 21.51 FPS (17.01 MB/s)
 94 frames in 5.03 secs ==> 18.68 FPS (14.78 MB/s)
107 frames in 5.03 secs ==> 21.28 FPS (16.83 MB/s)
106 frames in 5.03 secs ==> 21.06 FPS (16.66 MB/s)
 85 frames in 5.12 secs ==> 16.60 FPS (13.13 MB/s)
 90 frames in 5.00 secs ==> 17.99 FPS (14.23 MB/s)
104 frames in 5.17 secs ==> 20.11 FPS (15.91 MB/s)
 63 frames in 5.04 secs ==> 12.49 FPS (9.88 MB/s)
105 frames in 5.00 secs ==> 20.98 FPS (16.60 MB/s)
 94 frames in 5.09 secs ==> 18.47 FPS (14.61 MB/s)
 80 frames in 5.00 secs ==> 15.99 FPS (12.65 MB/s)
111 frames in 5.02 secs ==> 22.13 FPS (17.51 MB/s)
 29 frames in 1.30 secs ==> 22.23 FPS (17.58 MB/s)

Read Summary : 2000.00 frames in 107.36 secs
             :    9.09(min)   18.63(avg)   22.23(max) FPS
             :    7.19(min)   14.74(avg)   17.58(max) MB/s

Press any key to continue . . .

superboss · **Joined:** Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:32 pm **Posts:** 290

Quite low numbers still gaiden.. the drive alone should be able to throughput alot more than those numbers, whats your bottleneck? I'm getting similiar numbers on 2x raided samsung drives that bench around 45MB/s...

gaiden · **Posted:** Thu Feb 22, 2007 9:11 am

The main bottleneck is money

the ide hard drives, and the MB the Nas is on. this is my test nas.
the main server which has better specs is offline..

Agree not the highest of numbers, but for me its ok. anything that needs instant access is kept local. most of my stuff is streamed and my network copes fine.

NEED to change my sig its changed!

BBCritical · **Joined:** Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:29 am **Posts:** 10

Any further word on this from server elements?

superboss · **Joined:** Sun Sep 24, 2006 1:32 pm **Posts:** 290

I've tried to identify a possible cause to my relative low numbers but Im out of clues.

dimension · **Posted:** Thu Mar 01, 2007 1:08 pm

Quote:

Whilst I understand the solution you chose for this issue, buying more hardware, I don't think this is the right solution. I don't believe this is a hardware issue, it looks like a software issue.

That’s a tough one. I’m not so sure that the problem can be easily diagnosed as software. You can only guess at what the problem may be. Keep in mind that the included drivers work with multitude of NICs, so a given driver may perform well with one NIC while the same driver may not do so hot with another. To complicate matters, there are also plenty of issues to be had with some motherboard chipsets in combination with some PCI NICs that can also be a cause for crappy performance. Let me also add the problems that are often caused by network topology.

Here is a pretty good paper on gigabit by people who know. I know it is written with the Internet as the primary subject, but on a smaller scale, the issues are the same.

http://www.wareonearth.com/whitepapers/ ... tworks.pdf

fordem · **Joined:** Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:22 am **Posts:** 144

dimension wrote:

Here is a pretty good paper on gigabit by people who know. I know it is written with the Internet as the primary subject, but on a smaller scale, the issues are the same.

http://www.wareonearth.com/whitepapers/ ... tworks.pdf

A lot of what is mentioned there is not applicable to local area networks especially the smaller ones where you're likely to find NASLite.

Read the article and you'll realise that the issues raised only become problematic as the RTT (round trip time - the time taken for a data packet to travel from end to end and the corresponding acknowledgement to return) increases - note that he uses 40 mS as a typical coast to coast RTT - on a local area network RTT should be <2mS

dimension · **Posted:** Sun Mar 04, 2007 9:18 am

Quote:

A lot of what is mentioned there is not applicable to local area networks especially the smaller ones where you're likely to find NASLite.

You are right but the point I was trying to make is that troubleshooting gigabit is not all that simple. There are many elements of the network, even on a LAN scale that can be the problem. :wink:

NASLite Network Attached Storage

Upgraded to gigabit switch, now my read speeds are terrible.

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