Slow Transfer Speed

[russdyer]

Just setup my FreeNAS box yesterday, but I'm getting super-slow transfer speeds of 10-11 Mb/s. I was hoping for the 30-50 range. Both PCs are connected through wired, I am just trying to figure out why it is so slow.

My NAS was built using:

ASUS E35M1-M PRO Fusion Micro ATX Motherboard
AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core)
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 Memory
4x2TB WD Caviar Green WD20EARS SATA 3.0Gb/s HDD

Are the WD Green drives to blame? Do they not have a high read/write speed?

Is there a configuration that I need to enable in FreeNAS?

Should I change the Transfer Mode from "Auto" to "SATA 3.0 gb/s" ?

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi Russ,

Check the FAQ in my signature, my guess is your network card isn't configured for Gig or doesn't support Gig.

 

[russdyer]

I checked my ASUS motherboard and it has a "Realtek® 8111E , 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller(s)" according to the website. Is there something that I need to enable in FreeNAS to take advantage of it? Do I need to enable it within the BIOS? Sorry, I didn't see anything in your Unofficial FAQ regarding this question.

 

[russdyer]

I just looked up my wireless router -- it's a Linksys WRT54GL and it seems that it isn't a gigabit device.

I suppose this is the problem?

Back to the previous question, is there anything that I have to enable in FreeNAS to take advantage of a gigabit NIC or will it automatically take care of that provided I get a gigabit router?

 

[ProtoSD]

Yes, your router is the bottleneck. I just got myself a decent Gig switch and I'm now gettting 40-60MB/s.

No, if your NIC is supported by FreeNAS, it should automatically adjust.

Update: sorry, didn't see your previous post. No, you shouldn't need to change anything in your BIOS to make it faster.

 

[joeschmuck]

If the NIC between both computers are 1GB, they might be auto detecting and you might be able to connect them directly together and test it out. If it doesn't work then your NIC can't compensate for a straight cable. It won't hurt anything to try. Odd are, like my friend protosd said, the router is your bottleneck. Buy a network switch, these can be had for under $30.00 and connect your computers, NAS, and the WRT54. Don't buy a 5 port if you are not going to have one port free, it will irritate you later and you will buy an 8 port, and make sure it says SWITCH, not hub.

 

[russdyer]

Bought a Netgear N300 Gigabit Wireless Router and now I'm getting about 30-34 MB/s. I was hoping for more like 50 MB/s, but I suppose 30 is better than before. I have gigabit cards in both machines, I wonder why I can't seem to achieve 50-60?

 

[joeschmuck]

Connect the two machines directly together, no router or switch. Transfer a large file (600MB or more) and see what the transfer rate is. If you are transferring lots of small files, that will be much slower. The datasheet for the wireless router you just bought doesn't state if the four ports are a switch or hub.

 

[Milhouse]

To test the raw performance of your network, use iperf (it's included in 8.0.1-Release). There's a version of iperf for Windows, here. A guide on how to use iperf is here.