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[wrayster]

Hi

I'm new to this forum so here goes.

First of all my set up:

D-Link DNS-320L hook up to a D-Link DSL-2680 router with a 1m CAT 5e cable.

MacBook Pro hooked up to my router with a 5 meter CAT 5e cable.


The issue:

I recently ran a backup and it took 30 hours, 7 minutes and 11 seconds to backup 308.2GB of data.

By my reckoning this works out at just under 3 MB/sec transfer rate. Seems really slow?

Whilst the backup was running I logged on to my NAS and noticed in the resource Monitor that CPU kept regularly peaking at 100%. In fact it was hardly ever not peaking at 100%!

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is 3MB/sec the sort of speed I should expect? Other reviews and forums suggest transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec should be possible is this possible? If the CPU is maxing out presumably there is nothing I can do to speed things up like using CAT 6 cables or 1Gigabyte switch?

Any thoughts/help would be most appreciated before I get ride of the thing!

[JavaLawyer]

Were the files you compied comprised primarily of small sized files (e.g. KB sized) or larger (MB/GB sized)?

[Mausschubser]

wrayster!

Your router has only FastEthernet (100 MBit/s), so the theoritical limit is ~10MByte/s.
You can try connecting directly (then you have to set up a fixed IP address for both the MacBook and the DNS) - this in not very convenient but good for testing.

My experience (in a Gigabit Ethernet network spreaded over the entire house through some switches):
from a PC with FastEthernet about 6-8MByte/s
from a PC with Gigabit Ethernet about 40-60MByte/s

The speed is not constantly, sometimes it just gets half of it - for whatever reason. I also found the CPU in the DNS-320L very busy. In case I uploaded photos, the UPnP media server took a significant part of CPU power for generating thumbs.

When storing such huge amount of data is your default application, then better invenst into a Gigabit unmanaged switch. Not very costly, and keep your DSL-2680 for internet access. (assuming that your MacBook has a GigE lan adapter)

[JavaLawyer]

Your router has only FastEthernet (100 MBit/s), so the theoritical limit is ~10MByte/s.
ter)

Good catch.  

@wrayster

As suggested in the prior post, if you are intent on sticking with your current router, you may want to consider purchasing a GB switch to directly connect your DNS-320L and other devices you are going to regularly copy files to/from the DNS-320L. A switch will bypass the throughput bottleneck of your router.

[otog]

wrayster!

Your router has only FastEthernet (100 MBit/s), so the theoritical limit is ~10MByte/s.
You can try connecting directly (then you have to set up a fixed IP address for both the MacBook and the DNS) - this in not very convenient but good for testing.

My experience (in a Gigabit Ethernet network spreaded over the entire house through some switches):
from a PC with FastEthernet about 6-8MByte/s
from a PC with Gigabit Ethernet about 40-60MByte/s

The speed is not constantly, sometimes it just gets half of it - for whatever reason. I also found the CPU in the DNS-320L very busy. In case I uploaded photos, the UPnP media server took a significant part of CPU power for generating thumbs.

When storing such huge amount of data is your default application, then better invenst into a Gigabit unmanaged switch. Not very costly, and keep your DSL-2680 for internet access. (assuming that your MacBook has a GigE lan adapter)

hi Mausschubser,
followed your suggestion and bought myself a 5port Dlink Gigabit switch. connected my laptop and my NAS to the switch and connected the switch to my router using CAT5 and CAT5e cables. do i have to use CAT5e for all? after setting it up the file copy speed was still the same. still at 10mb/s. how come it is still slow?

[Mausschubser]

Hi otog!

Your setup is correct, the cables may be OK for Gigabit Ethernet. Cat 5 UTP is the minimum needed (OK for shorter connections).
Cat 5e is a good choice.
(Choosing better quality instead of better price is often a good idea. I have CAT 7 in my house's wall cabeling - which is an overkill for GigE, CAT 6 terminals and CAT 5e cables between devices and the wall plugs).

Check this:

• Does your computer show a 1000MBit connection (Windows: in the properties of network adapter)?
• Is the NAS set to 1000 MBit?
  DNS-320L: Network Management --> LAN Setup --> Link Speed Settings:
  LAN Link Speed = 1000.

If these 2 checks are OK, but still slow transfer <10MByte/s, then test a direct connection following this:
Have a CAT 5e cable directly between your computer and NAS. Set in both a static IP address, e.g.: 192.168.0.1 for the PC and 192.168.0.2 for the NAS. Then try to copy files from your computer to a share on the NAS. Enter the NAS's IP Address in the file explorer to get access (\\192.168.0.2).

[otog]

Hi otog!

Your setup is correct, the cables may be OK for Gigabit Ethernet. Cat 5 UTP is the minimum needed (OK for shorter connections).
Cat 5e is a good choice.
(Choosing better quality instead of better price is often a good idea. I have CAT 7 in my house's wall cabeling - which is an overkill for GigE, CAT 6 terminals and CAT 5e cables between devices and the wall plugs).

Check this:

• Does your computer show a 1000MBit connection (Windows: in the properties of network adapter)?
• Is the NAS set to 1000 MBit?
  DNS-320L: Network Management --> LAN Setup --> Link Speed Settings:
  LAN Link Speed = 1000.

If these 2 checks are OK, but still slow transfer <10MByte/s, then test a direct connection following this:
Have a CAT 5e cable directly between your computer and NAS. Set in both a static IP address, e.g.: 192.168.0.1 for the PC and 192.168.0.2 for the NAS. Then try to copy files from your computer to a share on the NAS. Enter the NAS's IP Address in the file explorer to get access (\\192.168.0.2).

i tested with my laptop and found out it had a 100mbps network connection while my desktop had a 1gbps one. thanks a lot for your help. youdaman.

[wrayster]

Were the files you compied comprised primarily of small sized files (e.g. KB sized) or larger (MB/GB sized)?

Thanks for the question, sorry for late response. There was a mix of file sizes as it was a backup of all my files. Small docs and larger image and video files.

How does this effect things?

[john5342]

Thanks for the question, sorry for late response. There was a mix of file sizes as it was a backup of all my files. Small docs and larger image and video files.

How does this effect things?

I recently bought one of these and backed up a load of photos onto it. When i realized how slow things were going i checked the Resource Monitor in System Status and found 83% of the CPU was being used by "do_thumbnail". Considering that the CPU is probably one of the biggest bottle necks that could be part of the cause. Sadly i have no figured out what it is, why it is running or how to disable it so i can't check if that is actually the cause.

[gokulagiridaran]

Hi

I too have a similar problem. I use DNS 320L connected to my Router (Cisco DPC 3925), I use wi-FI to access the router for the internet / NAS. The Mac mounts volume as SMB share. When I transfer the files, I get a max speed of 3MB/Sec.

I set the Port speed on my router & NAS to 1000 FULL. But still the same.

thanks
Gokul

[priitv8]

I set the Port speed on my router & NAS to 1000 FULL. But still the same.

That's because the LAN speed of NAS is not the bottleneck here. First and foremost it is the Wi-Fi that's the limiting factor. BTW I just read the review of New AirPort Extreme 802.11ac and it seems to yield File transfer speeds in the same range as you've got:

File copy from the connected hard drive to the MacBook: 3.6 MBps (Read)
File copy from the MacBook to the connected hard drive: 4.4 MBps (Write)
File copy from the connected hard drive to Windows 7:  7.3 MBps (Read)
File copy from Windows 7 to the connected hard drive:  9.8 MBps (Write)

Source: PC Mag : Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station (A1521)
Which brings to the conclusion that the jump from 300Mbps WLAN to 1Gbps WLAN didn't bring any groundbreaking performance boost for file transfer. OK, they used the USB 2.0 external drive bringing the USB limitations into the game as well. AP TimeCapsule with SATA-connected HDD would have been a better choice.
PS Part of the problem might be the bad implementation of SMB under OS X (why else is the Windows performance 2x better above?). Why don't you connect your Mac to NAS over AFP protocol and see if it makes any difference?
PPS Using my AirPort Extreme 802.11n Dual-Band, DNS-325 mounted over AFP and rMBP I seem to get around 10MBps in both directions (R/W).

[gokulagiridaran]

Thank you, Do you any links which will help me configure AFP on my mac?

Regards
Gokul.

[priitv8]

Thank you, Do you any links which will help me configure AFP on my mac?

There's nothing to configure on the Mac, it's native. You need to enable AFP service on the NAS though (Application Management > AFP Service)
In the Finder you simply take Go > Connect to Server (Cmd+K) and type the URL with AFP:

Code: [Select]

afp://YourNAS.local/If you have FunPlug, then you can start to mod Avahi's (Linux's Bonjour/Zeroconf daemon) config files as was described here:
http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=53157.0

[NixZero]

2.5-3MB/s is regular for a 802.11G wifi connection.

[priitv8]

2.5-3MB/s is regular for a 802.11G wifi connection.

Last poster - gokulagiridaran - had a Cisco DPC 3925 which seems to be 802.11n.