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[kiravae]

Hi, I just got a DNS-321 and have it attached to my router.  I'm using it to back up data from 2 laptops.  The disks are set up as standard and formatted EXP3. I have the newest firmware.

My old XP laptop gets a speed of about 3.5MBps when sending data to the NAS over ethernet.  I'm using a cat5 patch cable because neither laptop is gigabit capable. The other laptop is running Vista and about 2 years old.  It gets about 2.5MBps over wireless but only about 1.3MBps over ethernet.  The device manager thinks the ethernet card is fine, but something must be wrong.  I haven't done this before so if I'm missing something obvious let me know . I know I could gain some speed if I reformatted as EXP2 but it's so glacial I don't think that would completely solve it. Eventually these laptops will be replaced by newer ones but I'd like to speed it up before then if I can.  Thank you for any suggestions.

Rachel

[mzpx]

I am not a networking guru, but here are some ideas:

- Make sure you don't compare apples to oranges. Copying large files is faster than copying a bunch of small ones. So if you have a set of JPGs on one laptop and some large ISO files on the other, that is not a fair comparison. Best if you copy the same (large) file onto both laptops and test with that;

- Transfer rates can be really bad if the port is running 'half duplex', meaning it either talks or listens, but not both. In full duplex mode it does both. Depending on your switch / network card / driver settings many things could go wrong. Most recent and decent hardware is full duplex capable, but you have to figure how it is configured and I can not help with that. Try google/bing; (The cable could be an issue too, but you are using the same cable, so it is NOT.)

- 3.5MBps is pretty much I would expect over a 10/100 network. Even with gigabit you won't get much more than double of that. Get some backup software that does incremental backups and let it take its time to create the initial (full) backup. The incrementals should then be smaller - thus faster; (I am not using my DNS-321 for backup, so don't ask me which software to use.)

- Read older postings in this forum. You might just find some tip that applies to you. It seem to me someone posts about the DNS-321 being slow every other day and I don't read half of those posts, so you might bump into some good ideas that I missed;

[gunrunnerjohn]

In truth, with gigabit and jumbo frames, you should easily get into the high teens, and some folks here claim ever faster speeds.  I'm speaking of large files, 100mb or larger.

[JoeSchmuck]

You will gain a noticable ablut of speed if you used EXT2 format over EXT3 but you take a loss in data recoverability.  I'm not sure why you have higher data rates over wireless, very strange.  But if you can't get a better speed with EXT3 then I think you need to address your network or computer issues.  Those are very low speeds.  How are you obtaining the speed information?  What file sizes are you transferring?

mzpx has some nice comments for you to run with.

-Joe

[kiravae]

Thank you for the comments, they turned out to be helpful, but the solution was something I didn't expect.  For some reason, if I turn off wireless capability on the laptop, the ethernet connection speeds up to between 5-8MBps, but if i switch wireless on again, ethernet slows back down to about 1.3MBps. Since the laptop's only connected to the ethernet cord if a lot of stuff needs to be transferred, this is an easy enough solution, though I don't actually know why it would work that way.  I only found this out by chance - while turning off the antivirus, firewall, etc. to rule them out as the problem, I turned off the wireless to be on the safe side! Thanks again,

Rachel

[gunrunnerjohn]

8mbyte/sec on a 100mbit network sounds about right.

[ceyko]

It is always a good idea to keep connection only active.  When both are connected you end up with 2 default gateways.  In the routing world, two equal cost paths sometimes get load balanced...sometimes not.  However, windows will assign a better/worst cost on the default gateways and only 1 will be used.  It is possible that it was simply using the wireless.

Either way, this is just good practice to only use what you need - unless you're doing NIC teaming or something.

Take care

Thank you for the comments, they turned out to be helpful, but the solution was something I didn't expect.  For some reason, if I turn off wireless capability on the laptop, the ethernet connection speeds up to between 5-8MBps, but if i switch wireless on again, ethernet slows back down to about 1.3MBps. Since the laptop's only connected to the ethernet cord if a lot of stuff needs to be transferred, this is an easy enough solution, though I don't actually know why it would work that way.  I only found this out by chance - while turning off the antivirus, firewall, etc. to rule them out as the problem, I turned off the wireless to be on the safe side! Thanks again,

Rachel

[gunrunnerjohn]

If you have a wired and wireless connection active, Windows default routing is to prefer the wired connection.

[kiravae]

I would have assumed (wrongly, it turns out) that information would automatically choose to travel the fastest route, that being the ethernet.  That just shows that I don't think like a computer, or more specifically, Windows

Rachel

[ceyko]

If you have a wired and wireless connection active, Windows default routing is to prefer the wired connection.

Logical, and I tested to confirm.  Then I wondered why it was using wireless for things in the past (when I've been a dingy).  I've come to a hasty guess that it is due to arp.  If it is already resolved on a wireless connection (assuming on the same subnet of course) it probably would not try to use the wired connection.  This could be what the OP encountered.  More or less a guess, just trying to figure out why I've gotten boogered up on similar issues.

[JoeSchmuck]

Rachel,
  You're not alone.  Bill keeps us all guessing.

-Joe

[gunrunnerjohn]

If this stuff were simple, I'd be out of a job!

[TheWitness]

Turn off the UPNP Media Server, and you will find that, for the most part, problem solved.  Keep in mind that this little guy does not have a big CPU or lot's of memory.  However, when writing to the device, I am able to peak at around 14% network consumption ~14MBytes/Second (close enough for Government work )

The Media Server has a bug that causes the server to goto 100% CPU utilization which leaves no CPU for performing file transfers.  The best way to solve this is to disable it.  When you install funplug and sshd, you can see this first hand when using the top command.

TheWitness