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[cochbr]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble understanding why I my transfer speed to/from my desktop to/from NAS is anywhere from 5-10MB/sec when I have a "gigabit" network. I just replaced my 10/100 nic with a 10/100/1000, and the transfer rate is still the same. I'm frustrated.

This is my setup:
-Internet connection to
-D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N™ Gigabit Router to
-D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch to
-D-Link DGS2205 5-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch AND D-Link DNS-323-1TB 1TB ShareCenter 2-Bay NAS, SATA, in RAID 1 with (2) Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drives
-from the 5-Port Switch to my Dell Desktop with newly installed D-Link DGE-530T 10/100/1000 Gigabit Desktop PCI Adapter.

All are connected with cat5e.

I've tried small files under 1MB and large files, like HD movies, and transfer rates with the 10/100 nic was 5-10MB, and with the newly installed gigabit nic, it's the same. This is driving me nuts.

To add to the frustration, D-Link "Tech Support" second level wasn't much help and when the CSR felt he couldn't resolve my issue... he hung up on me.  Nice...

Any suggestions, help, MUCH appreciated.

Thanks.

[Eric-The-Large]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble understanding why I my transfer speed to/from my desktop to/from NAS is anywhere from 5-10MB/sec when I have a "gigabit" network. I just replaced my 10/100 nic with a 10/100/1000, and the transfer rate is still the same. I'm frustrated.

This is my setup:
-Internet connection to
-D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N™ Gigabit Router to
-D-Link DGS-2208 8-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch to
-D-Link DGS2205 5-Port 10/100/1000 Desktop Switch AND D-Link DNS-323-1TB 1TB ShareCenter 2-Bay NAS, SATA, in RAID 1 with (2) Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5 TB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 32MB Cache 3.5 Inch Internal Hard Drive ST31500341AS-Bare Drives
-from the 5-Port Switch to my Dell Desktop with newly installed D-Link DGE-530T 10/100/1000 Gigabit Desktop PCI Adapter.

All are connected with cat5e.

I've tried small files under 1MB and large files, like HD movies, and transfer rates with the 10/100 nic was 5-10MB, and with the newly installed gigabit nic, it's the same. This is driving me nuts.

To add to the frustration, D-Link "Tech Support" second level wasn't much help and when the CSR felt he couldn't resolve my issue... he hung up on me.  Nice...

Any suggestions, help, MUCH appreciated.

Thanks.

cochbr,

I've just been there... It *may* be your ethernet cable being the bottleneck.

I replaced mine with Cat6 cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_physical_layer#Gigabit_Ethernet

However, it seems that the 323 is so slow that it probably never saturates a regular network anyway...

E

[cochbr]

What are your transfer speeds to/from the DNS-323?

Do you think my bottleneck could be my desktop, which is a Dell Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 2.13GHz with 4GB RAM running Vista 32-bit?

[fordem]

When last were your drives defragged?

[dosborne]

Try running a tool like NASTester to get actual values.

[TJ]

Is there a way for one to defrag without pulling the drives out and using a machine that runs linux, or funplugging?

[Eric-The-Large]

What are your transfer speeds to/from the DNS-323?

Do you think my bottleneck could be my desktop, which is a Dell Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 2.13GHz with 4GB RAM running Vista 32-bit?

cochbr,

I run OSX and can't find anything sensible to use to measure network speeds. If anyone knows how to do it properly please let me know... :-)

Surely there's no way your machine could be the bottleneck with specs like that. Even if you are running Vista ;-)

E

[gbriggle]

I have two DNS-323s with a single Seagate green 1.5 TB, 5900 RPM drive in each.  The PC is a quad core Intel.  All of my computer devices are Gb and connected with Cat 6. And all of my PC and AV devices are connected to green Dlink Gb switches.

I had identical throughputs as what you are seeing, measured with NASTester as another poster specified, until I changed the PC NIC and the NASes to support jumbo frames.  My throughput went to 15 GB/min on one NAS and 20 GB/min on the other NAS.  It did not make an appreciable difference whether I set the frame size to 5k or 9k.  Also note my NASes are formatted ext3, which I believe is slower than ext2 but do not know what impact that could have on throughput.

Concerning the slower drive, it is definitely the drive itself being slower.  I probably need to pull both drives and compare, but I do not recall any jumpers on either drive.

[McPillager]

Jumbo frames will almost double the speed if set both in the nas and in the NIC(s). Feel free to use the maximum setting available.
Apart from switches and cables and other network devices there are many other factors that may be the cause of 100mbs speeds in gigabit lan. One is the nas's processor power while another is the speed capabilities of the hard disks themselves.
As far as I know only very few users have managed to get gigabit transfer speeds myself excluded

[fordem]

Jumbo frames will almost double the speed if set both in the nas and in the NIC(s). Feel free to use the maximum setting available

It's highly unlikely that you'll see anything approaching double the speed when using jumbo frame - 30~50% increase is more likely - it's also possible to experience reduced throughput if you're going to be moving small files rather than large ones.

The optimum frame size is best determined by experimentation, and at no time should the setting on the hosts exceed the maximum size supported by any switches in the network, or you will have problems.

[cochbr]

I posted my problem on Tom's Hardware discussion and the consensus there was that the NAS was low end and to expect more than 10MB/s transfer rate was unrealistic.

My drives are relatively new - three months old - and, as mentioned are 7200rpm, not the green 5200rpm (I'm assuming this matters).  I have never defrag'd them, and only have 4-500gb on them.

I tried rebooting the DIR-655, DNS-323, my PC and all my switches.  Same results, 5 to 10(very rare)MB/s transfer rates.

I'm thiking I ought to relocate the DNS-323 to the 5-Port Switch where my desktop is connected to and try transferring files.  Thoughts?

Thanks.

[fordem]

The NAS is low end (I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that, you know what you paid for it), but it is capable of delivering at least double the 5~10 MB/sec you report - I've seen in excess of 30MB/sec with mine, under the right circumstances.

Your drives are only three months old and have 4~500 GB on them - what does that have to do with fragmentation?  I can have your drives more fragmented that you would believe in less than a day - but that's beside the point - how fragmented your drives become is directly related to how much they are used, and also how.

Also - you're taking the data off of one drive in one system & putting it onto another drive in another system - you need to consider fragmentation on the drives at both ends.

In your original post you asked if your machine could be the bottleneck?  The short answer is YES - it could, I'm not going to say that it is, but simply that the lowly DNS-323 is capable of more than you're getting out of it, so the bottleneck might lie elsewhere.

[usmarine0622]

Hey I've all but gave up on this device the transfer speeds are horrible. I had 2 with 2tb drive in each, I replaced my nas with a Synology DS211J. That thing is lighting fast compared to this one I get 51mb transfer speeds with the same hardware and using a cat5e cable, while I would only see 15 tops with the dlink nas

[McPillager]

It's highly unlikely that you'll see anything approaching double the speed when using jumbo frame - 30~50% increase is more likely - it's also possible to experience reduced throughput if you're going to be moving small files rather than large ones.

The optimum frame size is best determined by experimentation, and at no time should the setting on the hosts exceed the maximum size supported by any switches in the network, or you will have problems.

I got 19MB/s with the 9000 setting compared to 10MB/s without it.

[fordem]

That is an impressive gain, but unfortunately, not typical.