NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hello
I recently installed NASLite onto a spare pc and I am very pleased with it.

Now I have tried to improve transfer speed but actually made it slower!

Originally I used the pc's 10/100 connection (at 100) and would typically transfer my "Word" folder (982MB, 3997 files, 146 folders) from pc to nas in a little over 3 minutes.

I have just bought a Netgear GS108 gigabit switch and put a Netgear GA311 Ethernet adapter in the NAS box, the motherboard of my PC (MSI) is already gigabit.
The indicator lights on the cards and switch all show the connection to be gigabit (1000) speed.

My transfer rate has now dropped to about one third or worse, say, 10 mins to transfer the same data.
I know the GA311 is not mentioned in the hardware spec for NASLite2 but it "appears" to be working ok. Reducing my lan to just three devices, pc + nas + switch, does not make any difference.

Do you think it could be an issue between NASLite2 and the GA311?

Thank you for any advice

Les

The GA311 is supported. In previous posts Ralph has recommended it so I doubt there is a problem between the nic and Naslite. I’ll look at the cables first. Gig-E is sensitive to cabling so good cables specked for gigabit are a must.

Thank you dimension

It is comforting to know that the GA311 is supported.

Following your suggestion I have just swapped out both cables, pc to switch and nas to switch. No improvement in speed unfortunately. My cables are all cat 5e.

I have also tried disabling the onboard lan in my pc and fitted another GA311 in case it was a dodgy mobo. Again, no change.

About how long do you think it would typically take a 1GB file to transfer from pc to nas using 100 v 1000 net speeds. I know it is a bit like "how long is a piece of string" but can someone give me a rough real world ball park figure.

Aaaah... Just had another idea, swapped the brand new Netgear GS108 gigabit switch for a DS104 10/100 hub and I am back to my original speed (3 min to transfer), swapping back to the gigabit switch slows me back to 10mins or more. I reckon it may just be a faulty switch. I shall order another one and see if that solves the problem.

Fingers crossed and thank you for listening....

Les

Ok, now I am really confused.

Just as a final throw of the dice before replacing the Netgear GS108 switch, I ran a crossover cable between my pc and the nas.
The transfer speed was slow, back to 10 mins.

So.....

If I connect via 10/100 I get 3x the transfer speed of gigabit.

What is going on here?

Help!

Les

Gigabit needs Cat-5e or 6. You stated above that you are using 5e so we can assume it's not the cables. The second thing to look at is duplexing. Make sure that both your WinX client and NASlite connect to the network at full duplex. If that’s the case, and you still see slow speeds, then take a look at the IRQ allocation on the NASLite machine. The NIC should have a dedicated IRQ. Turn off all unnecessary devices in the BIOS including the onboard NIC.

Hope that helps…

Hello Tony

Thank you for your help.

I do not "feel" that it is a problem with the NAS but rather begin to wonder if it is the PC.

My latest finding is that I have the same problem whether I use the on-board gigabit lan connector or the PCI card.

My lan has been reduced to a minimum with just my pc connected to the nas via a switch, all next to each other with short cables.

The nas appears to be running beautifully.

When I run the lan conection in my pc at 100 full duplex the file transfer to nas takes 3 mins. when I run it at 1000 full duplex it takes 10 mins.

I am baffled. All appears to be ok, no reported collisions or errors.

Tomorrow I shall build a new "clean" pc and try that. I have a feeling that the problem lies in the pc and the nas is innocent!

Les

I have just setup another pc BLOCKED_WORD to the nas and run some speed tests.
I am copying a 1GB file and "internally" on the pc from one drive to another it takes 1 min 10 sec to copy. So that is my benchmark, it cannot get faster than that.

Copying from the pc to nas using 1000 (gigabit) it took 1 min 40 sec and if I drop the speed of the card in the pc to 100 full duplex it took 1 min 55 sec.

So it looks as though the problems I was having yesterday using a different pc to send data to the nas are to do with the pc.

I am a little dissapointed that gigabit ethernet was not faster but that is down to my lack of experience and unrealistic expectations.

Best wishes to all

Les (and I still think NASLite2 is just brilliant!)

with your transfert speed problem, you also have to take into account that the pci bus is not able to give you full gigabit speed. having a gigabit network in my office with 24 port netgear gigabit switch, the maximum oerformance i have seen so far is 200mbit. i have also used different network adaptors, from $10.00 to $250.00, same result

I'm having the same problem. All hardware is new including the cables. The switch is a high-end Netgear gigabit switch.

Transfer speed is less than half of what I was getting with 10/100. I am using an Intel Pro/1000 GT card in the NAS. It has a P3 1.13Ghz and 512MB of RAM.

Transferring between two desktop computers I can copy 200MB in less than 4 seconds. Coming from the NAS it takes forever, and I get only about 2.5MB/sec.

What is the deal? Using 10/100 on the NAS before, I was getting 10+MB/sec.

I'm still clueless as to why there is no forum section for transfer speeds, possibly causes for low performance and tips on how to get the most out of your hardware. Now these posts are scattered all over the place and the same questions are asked over and over again etc... is there any reason besides lack of time?

I really wish I could figure out why it is going so slow. The whole reason I spent almost $400 and went to Gigabit was for the NAS, and it is the only thing that doesn't work now

I did notice that the system load was close to, and sometimes over, 100%. But why I only get about 2mb/sec, I have no idea. The Intel Pro/1000 cards are supposed to reduce cpu load, not increase it.

System load was only about 10% when using 10/100, and I was getting excellent transfer speeds upwards of 10mb/sec.

Have you tried putting the gigabit nic in a different pci slot? Any IRQ conflicts?

I'll check for IRQ conflicts, though I don't think there will be any. I disabled most of the motherboard ports and such.

Also forgot to mention that the 100% system load was happeneing when even when transferring files from a computer that only had a 10/100 card in it.

I need to get working on it today and determine if it is the hardware or NasLite causing the problem. I could try using OpenFiler, but it is such a hog compared to NasLite

Well, there are no conflicts. The card is by itself on IRQ 10.

I just put the Gigabit NIC in another system with identical CPU, and now I get ~40mb/sec

I wonder what's up with the other board? The system I put it in and got good speed was a Dell Poweredge 500SC with 384MB RAM. The normal system has 512MB.

Maybe the old DFI CA64-TC motherboard doesn't like the NIC.