NASLite Network Attached Storage

Hello all

I got a real strange problem with NASLite USB.

When I transfer a 12MB file from my Dell Desktop PC (10/100) on the NAS its just taking a couple of seconds.

But when I transfer that File back again, from the NAS to my Desktop PC, its taking like half an hour! The Speed is much slower than my Internet Connection which is just 1 Mbit

How can this happen? This isnt supposed to be like that right?

If anyone can help plz do - this is driving me nuts.

Thanks

EDIT: What I have done so far
I did a format of the harddisk and set all up new.
The problem remains the same. Transferring stuff onto the old compaq is around 8 MB/s (tested with a 2gb file) but transferring it back to the quite new Dell is incredibly slow.

I've seen odd problems like this (other OSes, not NASlite) caused by duplex mismatches. Things will work fine until there's a lot of traffic in one direction because packets start getting mangled without detection. Sometimes auto-sensing duplex doesn't work properly. Check the duplex setting for the Ethernet cards in your machines and on your Ethernet switch. If you have the machines plugged into a hub rather than a switch, the machines should both be set to half-duplex.

The duplex for NASlite can be determined by looking at the syslog. There will be an entry with something like "eth0 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full duplex" in it.

Good Luck!
-Jeff

jfrantz,

this is awesome! thanks so much for this hint!

ive checked my network card settings and it was set on "auto".
ive changed it to half 100 and now its transferring same speed both ways. of course im a semi-noob in networking and I dont know if this is the best option i set. ill try with 100 full.

but for now thanks a lot, its working sweet now!


PS: Ive got a question tho. Does the changing from "auto" to something specific have an impact on my normal networking activities? (i.e. internet, wlan and computer to computer networking)

Marco_CH,

I’m glad to hear that helped!

In early implementations of auto detecting duplex there were some incompatibilities between manufacturers. I haven’t run into this with equipment manufactured within the past five or six years but that doesn’t mean it is still not happening. I suspect that when it does happen, most people don’t notice it for the simple reason that the traffic level has to reach a high enough point to cause excessive packet collisions. Most people couldn’t saturate a 100Mb segment or even a 10Mb segment with traffic to or from the Internet so they would never notice the minimal number of packets which needed retransmitting due to collisions.

To answer your question regarding the effect on your normal networking activities, you most likely were experiencing the problem before but never noticed it as you weren’t saturating the Ethernet segment with traffic. If you have an Ethernet switch, you should be able to run full-duplex on each port, although some switches have duplex configurations for each port. If you have a hub, you will need to use half-duplex. The only difference between half and full duplex is that half duplex listens for network traffic on the wire before transmitting and detects collisions. Full-duplex does not listen before transmitting, nor does it detect collisions as it assumes there cannot be a collision. You therefore get higher throughput with full duplex as transmissions can occur simultaneously with receptions. As the traffic level increases with half-duplex, the throughput drops due to collision detection and the necessary retransmission of packets.

-Jeff

Hi again

Thanks for your help. Really saved the day, .. or night.

Actually I was able to increase the transfer speed even more by using FTP. For some (to me unknown) reason the transfer speed on both sides is like 20% higher when I use FTP for transferring instead of Samba.

Anyways. You said something:



Im sitting behind a router (SMC Barricade 7004ABR). Would you call that a hub? So this means I should use half-duplex?

Thanks a lot and good night

Regards
marco

Marco,

It appears that your SMC router has an integrated 4-port switch with full-duplex capabilities. I looked through the manual and did not see any duplex settings, so I assume it's always automatic.

Does the NASLite server indicate that it is full or half duplex? If the NASLite server is at half-duplex, try swapping the Ethernet card with different brand. If the NASLite server is at full-duplex, try forcing your workstation into full-duplex.

-Jeff

Jeff,

I did as you suggested and its working very nice now. Thanks for this. The only mysterious remains that SMART stuff which makes it close to impossible to transfer files from the NASLite Server onto my computer. This gets resolved after around 30 minutes when this SMART has finished.

Regards and thanks
Marco