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[reneetnancy]

Hi,

I am a new owner of DNS-321 & DIR-655.
After doing some test with it, I'm a little disappointed at the transfer speed.

While originally connected to 100BaseT,  I transferred files at around 8mb/s, which is near the limit of the network, which trigger my upgrade to the DIR-655.
Now that my connection speed has increase 10 times, my transfer rate is still around 16mb/s...

Network usage under Vista is very low (below 20% if I remember correctly), so where is the bottleneck now? I think that any SATA HD can provide better performance than that too...

Given the best situation, what transfer rate can one expect from the unit?

Thanks.

[ngcreese]

Check Small Network Builder (http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/). They tend to keep nas performance charts around.

I believe you are bumping up against the max speed of the unit from what I've seen on the charts. And this seems to be based on the use of a 400MHz processor. Short of seriously messing with the underlying linux kernel, I think you are, where you are.

BTW, is your file system formatted as EXT2 or EXT3?

I'm running a Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 1.5TB drive, formatted as EXT3 with data=ordered for the journaling mode.

I'm hooked up to a Netgear GS108 gigabit switch with jumbo packets set to 9K on the DNS-321 and on my Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit box, with an Asus A8n32-sli deluxe motherboard.

I only see about 10.5MB/s on downloads to my DNS-321.
I suspect if I went to data=writeback journaling mode, I would get back some of my performance.

Before installing the gigabit switch, I was only getting roughly 6 to 7 MB/s.

What are your thoughts on this?


I only see about 10.5MB/s on downloads to my DNS-321.
I suspect if I went to data=writeback journaling mode, I would get back some of my performance.

Before installing the gigabit switch, I was only getting roughly 6 to 7 MB/s.

Also, I seemed to remember higher throughput under the EXT2 format but I wasn't paying as much attention to the speed back then.

[reneetnancy]

I'm also using a Western Digital Caviar Green WD15EADS 1.5TB. And my PC is an Asus A8V-Deluxe (using a Marvell Yukon chipset for the networking)

I don't think a 400mhz processor would have any difficulty keeping up with a HD transfer rate so the chipset must be really slow...

I got the latest official firmware, which is 1.01 if my memory serve me well, and it does not support ext3 yet... So it's ext2!   

If the number you gave are correct for Ext3 then I'm glad I did not formatted my drive with this filesystem.

So if the bottleneck is the hardware, then I guess there no chance to have improvement trough a new firmware then...

[lis1974]

DNS-321 1.01 or 1.03b6 firmware. HP 1GB Hub. Intel 1GB network card 9kb jumbo frames. To unit from 15 to 20mb. But from unit only about 10-12mb. Strange ?
Look like this is the unit limitation, but for the first time I see writing speed 2 times more than reading speed. EXT2 FS, all Itunes and other program are disabled.

[Comamndo]

I use the DLink Extreme Gamer Wireless N Gigabit Router with no Jumbo frames and I I'm getting 200mb/s for file transfers using Filezilla FTP Client. I think that your transfer rates may be calculated incorrectly by windows with Jumbo frames on. I had a similar issue when using 2 PC's during transfer. I have to say that I really love this product, I moved 1TB over FTP in approximately 12 hours. I would only add 2 things to this system. USB \ eSata support for other external drives to be chained, USB Printer hosting. otherwise top notch product.

--Commando

[nrf]

the trick here is to know the limitations for the type of traffic one normally uses. For a specific type of traffic, the charts mentioned above at least let you see where the unit stands relative to other products for the type of usage they simulated. I wish I had seen those charts before I bought mine.

getting a specific traffic level in one specific usage does offer some optimism that the performance might be improvable via software, but given the number of functional issues I really doubt that anything much will happen in this aspect.

this product seems to have a "swiss army knife" flavor, but at least one can turn off some of the blades and focus on their own important capabilities. But beware of "jack of all trades, master of none"...

nrf

[reneetnancy]

I use the DLink Extreme Gamer Wireless N Gigabit Router with no Jumbo frames and I I'm getting 200mb/s for file transfers using Filezilla FTP Client. I think that your transfer rates may be calculated incorrectly by windows with Jumbo frames on. I had a similar issue when using 2 PC's during transfer. I have to say that I really love this product, I moved 1TB over FTP in approximately 12 hours. I would only add 2 things to this system. USB \ eSata support for other external drives to be chained, USB Printer hosting. otherwise top notch product.

--Commando

From my personal calculation, this is giving you a transfert rate of 24,3 MB/s or 243 mb/s (MB=megabytes, mb=megabits). Being on a network of 1 gb/s = 1000mb/s, it's giving you only a 1/4 of the theoretical speed.
Its should be able to transfer the 1TB in 3 hours, so 12 hours is not what I call to be pretty fast...

Otherwise, I too would have appreciated USB / eSata support. It's still a fine product anyways!  ;-)

[TheWitness]

From my personal calculation, this is giving you a transfert rate of 24,3 MB/s or 243 mb/s (MB=megabytes, mb=megabits). Being on a network of 1 gb/s = 1000mb/s, it's giving you only a 1/4 of the theoretical speed.
Its should be able to transfer the 1TB in 3 hours, so 12 hours is not what I call to be pretty fast...

Otherwise, I too would have appreciated USB / eSata support. It's still a fine product anyways!  ;-)

The maximum attainable network speed is predicated on the overall CPU speed of the unit.  This unit has a 400mhz CPU, which can not sustain ~1.2 billion bit's per seconds (aka 1.0Gbps). 

If it were to have a 2GHz processor, you would expect a larger throughput, but then the bottleneck becomes the disks.  If you had a Raid10 array of 8 Disks, and a 2GHz processor, you would like the performance a lot.  However, you would not be able to afford that for a home.

The best performance you will get in a home sized appliance would be something like an HP Windows Home Server at several hundred more dollars, and it would cost you a lot more than you spent on this.

Regards,

TheWitness