NASLite Network Attached Storage

I bought NASLite+ yesterday, having played with NASLite for a while. After re-formatting the disks due to a problem of my own ignorant making, all is well. I noticed the speed increase over NASLite as soon as I started another TrueImage run (1.5 hours with NASLite+ vs. 4 hours with NASLite).

Since then I've been playing around copying a 650 megabyte TrueCrypt archive from drive to drive using Windows drag and drop as well as FTP, both between the client and NASLite+ boxes, between two NASLite+ drives, and downloading simultaneously from the NASLite+ box and from another share on another machine.

I noticed a few things that made me think that if I purchased a NIC I might increase my transfer speed over using the on-board Ethernet adapter.

For example, no matter what file transfers I'm doing with the Windows drag and drop method, the client CPU is always pegged near or at 100% and the task manager says I'm getting around 20% network utilization (a bit higher network utilization if I'm doing client to server, a little less if I'm doing server to server (one network drive to another network drive).

If I transfer the file via FTP I get higher network utilization and the client CPU is only around 50%.

So I'm seeing higher network utilization when the CPU is relatively unburdened.

Is it the case with NIC vs. on-board Ethernet adapter (as seems to be with on-board vs. external phone modem, or on-board audio vs. sound card, or on-board video vs. video card) that if I purchased a decent Ethernet NIC for my client box, that I'd unburden the client CPU and get higher transfer speed?

I've looked through the forum and on the Internet for some insight on this question, but discussion here seems to be about on-board vs. NIC for the NASLite machine not the client machine.

On the Internet the consensus seems to be that there would not be much difference if the client machine uses a NIC vs. using the on-board Ethernet adapter, but I don't know how to reconcile that with the results above involving fairly large files.

According to DUMeter I'm getting a bit shy of 4 megabytes per second transfer speeds. If I'm transfering from one NASLite+ drive to the other it's around 2 megabytes per second on each connection (2 up and 2 down). This is only about a third of the theoretical maximum as I understand it. There's about 60 feet of Cat-5 separating the two machines, and there's a switch on the end the NASLite+ machine is connected to (along with a print server and a couple of other computers).

Mind you, I'm not complaining! I'm impressed with NASLite+. If I can get some more speed by unburdening the client machine's CPU, though, it might be worth it. What do you think?

Thanks! Steve

Some of the chips they use for the onboard NICs are rather crappy. They work but their performance is marginal at best. I learned this lesson early on and have used the 3Com cards ever since. The 3C905 card is a rocking card and they can be had for $2-3 UDS if you keep your eyes open. I now run Gigabit and the limit is my HDDs in my NAS box and not the link.

In your case the wire length in not an issue. I have run Gigabit over 275 feet and not had one packet dropped or malformed.

My advice to you is this. If you have the money then get on Ebay and buy one of the Gigabit switches there. You can have a 5 port for about $40.00 USD to your door and that is based on the Broadcom chipset. (Gateway 5 port switch) NICs can be had for around $20.00 each and sometimes much less. The Intel, 3Com, and Broadcom NICs are all good. I think that the newer cards from 3Com use the Broadcom chips. The Netgear seem to be used alot though I don't know about them. I do use a GA621 (Gigabit with SC fibre connector) in my NASLite+ box and it works great. So I would say that they are a good bet as well. All said and done you should be able to get both boxes and the switch for well elss than $100.00 USD. It is such a difference when you start moving files from box to box or server.

Again, keep in mind that the data rate you see will be limited by the drives in the boxes more than anything else.

Mike

Thanks for the advice Mike. I'll take it and report back.

One question, though. The Gigabit switch you suggest would be to replace my present router or to replace the switch at the NASLite end of the 60 foot Cat-5?

Cheers from Phoenix! Steve

I agree with Mike's comments, but I'll thow in some of my own.

Your transfer rates from the client are going to depend on several things. The NIC card is one of them. The CPU speed, the amount of memory in the client machine, and any other programs running at the time will also have a major effect.

Your test simply confirmed this. When the CPU is at 100% your network speeds go down because the CPU is busy doing non-network stuff. Using Windows drag-n-drop to transfer files uses more CPU power than an FTP transfer.

Putting a Gigabit NIC in a 100MHz PC isn't going to help much if the CPU can't keep up with the network or if you don't have enough memory for Windows to use for buffers. You didn't mention what your CPU/memory values are, but another option if your motherboard can handle it, would be to purchase more memory.

To answer your question to Mike, you would replace your current switch with a Gigabit version. I have been using Netgear GA311 NICs and a Netgear 8 port switch (metal case version) and have had no problems with them. I also like the 3Com NICs.

Hmmm... My main client machine is a 1.6 GHz P4 with 512 Meg of RAM, running Windows XP all up to date with patches.

At the time I did the tests I wasn't doing anything else with the machine, though Kaspersky Internet Suite 6 and DUMeter were doing their thing. There were a few other programs sitting in the tray. I'll disable some of Kaspersky and turn off whatever else I can find and see what happens to the network usage.

Am I correct in thinking that the suggestion to change out the switch for a Gigabit version implies that I should also change out my router? Netgear describes it as a router with a 10/100 switch.

I gather that if I plug a USB 1 device into a USB2 hub I just limited the whole thing to USB 1 speed. Is the same true with Ethernet NICs and switches?

Thanks again for the advice! Steve

Me again. I read your comment about the effects of the CPU, memory and so on. Thought I'd try unburdening the CPU. (I'd rather not spend the money to upgrade my RAM).

Wow! I didn't realize a firewall could bog you down that much!

I started out by emptying out my system tray and shutting down the security software. Then I tried the same tests as yesterday and essentially got 100% network utilization.

To find out what it was that was bogging me down, I re-booted to bring back all my doodads to the system tray, and to bring back the security software. Then I paused the first suspect, the firewall, and that was it.

I could see a small effect from having all the other doodads in the tray and with the other parts of the security software active, but the firewall makes essentially all the difference. With the firewall I get around 4 MBps. Without it I get close to the max. What a difference!

I would accuse my security suite of being a hog, but I checked against the Windows firewall with a download from the NASLite+ box (Windows firewall only works on inbound stuff I hear) and got just a little bit (if any) more network utilization than with my main firewall in place.

I'll see if there are any rules I could set to prevent the firewall from interfering, but I can always either live with it or pause the firewall if I'm in a hurry.

In the meantime, it seems that with my existing computer I could increase speeds by maybe 50% by implementing the suggestions the two of you have given me, and probably more if I got a beefier computer. I'd still have to get the firewall out of the way if I want the speed, but the speed would be available.

I think I may have run into the hard drive limitation you mentioned when I downloaded from the client to the server with the firewall off. The CPU was at about 50%, network utilization was about 74%, and the transfer rate was around 8 MBps.

OK, this is very interesting and instructive for me. Now I'll have to go see what I find on eBay (something else I've never done).

Thanks again. Over... Steve

Just plug the internet router into the Gigabit switch and plug all computers into the Gigabit switch and not the router. Also, dump the firewall on your box and set up a Smoothwall box. These rock and are really cheap. http://www.smoothwall.org

Write if you have any more questions about what I or the others have posted.

Mike

I'll do that. I understand I plug all the computers into the gigabit switch, the gigabit switch into the router, and the router into the cable modem, right?

I'm a little hesitant to trash the firewall on my computer, though. One of my co-worker's computer apparently got infected with some malware that got through his router and onto another machine when one of his kids or someone downloaded it. Apparently the thing got loose behind his router and since he had no firewall it got him, too. I know he had decent anti-virus on the machine but apparently it wasn't enough. I suppose there may be more to the story.

Smoothwall is actually my next project. I saw some mention of it on the forum here a few days ago, checked it out and though it was exactly what I had originally wanted to do with the machine that is now my NASLite+ box. One of my co-workers is giving me an old Pentium 133 box that he was actually going to put in the trash. I'm hoping I can stick a second NIC in it and connect the Gigabit switch you suggest into it. What I hope I'll get is a lot more control, reporting and logging than I'm getting with the router I have now, which offers not much.

Thanks! Steve

"I'll do that. I understand I plug all the computers into the gigabit switch, the gigabit switch into the router, and the router into the cable modem, right?"

Right.

The firewall doesn't stop those kinds of attacks that are invited in so that is that. The firwall doesn't belong on the windows box, that is what the smoothwall is for and it is really stealthy. I have been running it for over 3 years now with NO issues from the Beta to the present version. I can not recomend this software enough.

FYI, my present smoothwall box is a P200MMX with a 3Com 3c509 for the RED (modem) interface and a 3c905 for the green (internal network) interface. Also you need at least 64MB of RAM in the thing for it to run right. I have an old 1.2GB HDD as the boot drive. A P133 should do great for the firewall and if you do turn off your firewall you will notice alot of difference in performance.

I think that NASLite+ and Smoothwall are musts for any computer user that is even slightly serious about their network.

So to recap. The modem plugs into the RED interface on the smoothwall box. The GREEN interface on the smoothwall and the print server plug into the 100Mb switch which in turn plugs into the Gigabit switch. Any computers with Gigabit and the NASLite+ box plug into the Gigabit switch. I figure you can figure out the reason for the setup being like this. This is infact the way my network is presently setup.

Go Gigabit, you won't be sorry. Though you will be wanting to upgrading to 2.0 as soon as you can just for the RAID to get the most out of the Gigabit. I have a setup waiting for 2.0, that is if it ever comes out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike

Thanks Mike. I'll start cruising eBay after work.

One question please. You specify the print server to go into the 10/100 switch not the Gigabit switch. Is that because the presence of a non-Gigabit device on the Gigabit LAN will slow down the LAN the way a USB1 device on a USB2 hub will?

I ask because if that is the case I will need to relocate my printer or run another 60 foot CAT-5 cable between it and the 10/100 switch on the router.

Yes, I'm anxious to see V2 as well. The teaser posts were compelling. I was going to stick with NASLite until NASLite+ V2 came out, but I'm glad I went ahead, even if V2 comes out tomorrow.

Now I'm considering switching from NASLite+ to the USB Flash version. One of the reasons for wanting V2 is because I understand one can opt for booting and saving configurations on one of the hard drives. I don't have much confidence in floppies or Flash drives, having had many floppies and a couple of Flash drives go bad.

Cheers! Steve

Any of the Gigabit switches out now will automatically detect the speed of the device they're connected to. You can mix 10/100/1000 devices on the network and each device will run at it's maximum speed. The only time you'll see a slowdown is if a gigabit device is talking to a 10/100 device. Obviously you can't make the slow device faster! But a gigabit to gigabit transfer will happen at gigabit speeds even if there is a 10mbit device plugged into the switch.

Print servers are probably 10/100 devices, so you can put them on a 10/100 switch and not "waste" a gigabit switch port on a slow device. Same thing with your cable modem and router, they will typically be 10/100 devices since your cable modem doesn't transfer at gigabit speeds.

Ya, what smeyer said! Why waste a Gigabit port on a non Gigabit device.

As far as your worry about running network cables and lengths, DON'T. The limit is 100 Meters or 328 feet from device to device. I have run ethernet over 500 feet with no problem and even heard tell of those running it close to 1000 feet. Distance is not an issue for those in the home environment so don't worry it.

Mike

I stopped by to see if there'd been any news on V2, and thought I'd thank youse who suggested SmoothWall to me, and gigabit ethernet, too.

I have not yet purchased the gigabit NICs, and I still need one more gigabit switch to replace the 10/100 switch I'm using now, but I did purchase a gigabit switch to use with my new SmoothWall in anticipation of the other gigabit stuff to come.

It turned out my son wants an old machine to play old games with, so the P133 my co-worker offered me will go to my son instead of SmoothWall. Instead, I picked up a PIII 500 MHz with an 8 gig drive and 128 MB of ram, plus two extra 3-Com nics for $55, and a little KVM switch in order to add the Smoothwall to my network.

I have to agree, SmoothWall is pretty sweet. A lot of this experience was new to me, but it was fairly easy and I learned a fair bit. I had a little trouble that wound up being a bad CD drive, but I had removed one of those from the NASLite+ box and when I put it in the SmoothWall box it worked fine.

Applying the patches was a little bit of a challenge, but I hadn't RTFMed very well. My bad.

My only complaint is that there's a big jump in features between SmoothWall Express and the next tier. I found myself, as I went through the comparison matrix, saying "I'd want this," and "I'd want that," but my wife would shoot me if I spent the money, which isn't exactly chump change by the time I added the modules I'd want.

So now I'm thinking about another project. A couple that come to mind are video surveillance and data logging, both of which could tie in with NASLite+. I saw an article a while back that described how to take an inexpensive webcam and make it see-in-the-dark, and I've always thought it would be interesting to log temperatures, power consumption and so on.

I ramble. Thanks for the advice! Steve