SUPER SLOW NAS:(

[KAZY]

I have a NAS that is running extremely slow. When I transfer data using my Windows 10 computer i get around 5 - 10Mbps. It is mainly used for movies and I have Plex media plug in set up. I have it plugged directly into the router with a CAT6 cable. Originally I thought it was the switch that I was using but that has been removed and now I am kind of puzzled as too why it is running so slow! If some one knows a way or 2, to run speed test on a NAS, that be much appreciated if they show me so can try to find the bottleneck.

I have FreeNAS 9.10.1 installed
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
8051MB RAM (4 2GB sticks, DDR3)
4TB WD RED drive WDBMMA0040HNC-NRSN
MB is a HP 6200 Small Form Factor Desktop

 

[mjt5282]

in 9.10.1, you can go into System->Reporting, and check on CPU utilization, disk I/O, memory utilization, etc. I suspect without looking at your system that 8Gb is probably way too low for a performing NAS (probably the minimum realistically for 9.10.1 without running any plugins like Plex and having much memory dedicated to ZFS ARC memory caching is 16Gb).
a quick & dirty way to run a CPU benchmark on Freenas is to ssh in (or use Shell in the Web gui) and run :

Code:

openssl speed sha256

This is my result tonight, on a X11 64Gb Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1245 v5 @ 3.50GHz

Code:

type  16 bytes  64 bytes  256 bytes  1024 bytes  8192 bytes
sha256  54558.70k  131843.48k  226282.96k  276496.04k  300922.20k

 

[Mirfster]

4TB WD RED drive WDBMMA0040HNC-NRSN

Just one disk?

What Make/Model Motherboard? Wondering if you have a RealTek NIC in there too...

 

[KAZY]

MB is a HP 6200 Small Form Factor Desktop. Super old computer i converted into a NAS and figured it would cut it. Do you think i should upgrade the ram to 16GB?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Use iperf to test your network then use dd or iozone to test your disk performer. One of these will show you your bottle neck.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[KAZY]

The RAM is maxed out according to the FreeNas Report. The iperf test looks good witch does eliminate all networking issues. I got 140,000kbites 3 times. Is it worth it to upgrade from 8GB's to 16GB's of RAM? Will that make a big difference as far as the transfer rate.

 

[Mirfster]

Sure won't hurt it.

 

[KAZY]

After turning off Plex Media Server I have like 6GB's of unused RAM according to the report and it is still slow. When I upload this 4GB movie it only goes at 15-20mbps. When i download it, it goes at 20 - 35mbps. So it may not be RAM. I have a super high end AC5300 Tri-Band router and it is cat 6 up to the router. I dont understand why I cant get more like speeds of 100mbps+.

 

[SweetAndLow]

The RAM is maxed out according to the FreeNas Report. The iperf test looks good witch does eliminate all networking issues. I got 140,000kbites 3 times. Is it worth it to upgrade from 8GB's to 16GB's of RAM? Will that make a big difference as far as the transfer rate.

lol you got what iperf speeds? if you think 140mbit/s is good you have problems. You should easily be able to get 900+mbit/s. And ignore the FreeNAS memory usage unless you understand it, your memory should always be close to 100% used. Why would you not want to use all your memory? it's super fast and not using it is just wast full. In the end getting more RAM is never a bad thing but until you get your networking working correctly it will never be fast.
This is what your iperf should look like.

iperf -c 192.168.1.4 -p 9955
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.4, TCP port 9955
TCP window size: 85.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 192.168.1.244 port 42550 connected with 192.168.1.4 port 9955
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.09 GBytes 937 Mbits/sec

EDIT: Are you using WiFi?

 

[anodos]

What are these mbps? Megabytes/sec, megabits/sec, megabastards/sec?

 

[Ericloewe]

What are these mbps? Megabytes/sec, megabits/sec, megabastards/sec?

Millibit per second.

 

[anodos]

Millibit per second.

My next guess would've been ManBoobs/second.

 

[KAZY]

I am hard lined. That's super weird that I am that low. MB is a HP 6200. Then connector is a Intel 82579LM Gigabit Ethernet. Then I have a 4ft cat 6 cable up to the router. The router is an Linksys EA9500. Witch is a AC5400. The. Wi-if connected to the laptop that is doing the test. What could be the bottle neck?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Lol it's your wifi. This is to be expected, wifi isn't fast it's designed to be easy.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[gpsguy]

Wifi from the laptop. Try a wired connection.

Seriously, you have several issues. Modern day FreeNAS, ie. v8 and later, wasn't designed to run on "Super old (desktop) computer i converted into a NAS".

If you look at the doc's and stickies, you'll find that ECC RAM is highly recommended. This system doesn't support it. Having a single hard disk will limit performance and redundancy. 8GB of RAM is the bare minimum requirement. If you want to use plugins like Plex, you'll need additional memory.

And, even on a wired connection, the spec's on your client machine will factor into the performance equation, especially if it's a slow processor (many mobile CPU's are) and uses a hard disk, rather than a SSD.

What could be the bottle neck?

 

[logan893]

A router with bufferbloat can also be a factor. Even on the wired interface.

I experienced this first hand with a Technicolor TG799vacXTREAM. Even over the wired LAN-only switch portion of this router I would experience severe delays of up to 400 ms, which is a real killer for TCP performance.

You can use DSLreport's test to check bufferbloat.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

 

[SweetAndLow]

A router with bufferbloat can also be a factor. Even on the wired interface.

I experienced this first hand with a Technicolor TG799vacXTREAM. Even over the wired LAN-only switch portion of this router I would experience severe delays of up to 400 ms, which is a real killer for TCP performance.

You can use DSLreport's test to check bufferbloat.

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

This has nothing to do with the problem and the internal network being slow. This is for testing your wan connection.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[logan893]

My router caused internal networking to also be bogged down by bufferbloat, even when not exiting to WAN side. And it can very much affect the wireless also toward the LAN.

It's possible to visualise with Wireshark. Easier yet is that you could also see the effects of bufferbloat on LAN-only connections by having a continuous ping running. If I was not transferring any data the round trip delay was low, in the order of at most 1-2 ms. When I started pulling a large file from the server I would see the ping round trip time increase to 200-400 ms due to bufferbloat.

I have since had that wireless router replaced by my ISP, and the new one (slightly different model, TG798) is not having the same issue.

 

[anodos]

My router caused internal networking to also be bogged down by bufferbloat, even when not exiting to WAN side. And it can very much affect the wireless also toward the LAN.

It's possible to visualise with Wireshark. Easier yet is that you could also see the effects of bufferbloat on LAN-only connections by having a continuous ping running. If I was not transferring any data the round trip delay was low, in the order of at most 1-2 ms. When I started pulling a large file from the server I would see the ping round trip time increase to 200-400 ms due to bufferbloat.

I have since had that wireless router replaced by my ISP, and the new one (slightly different model, TG798) is not having the same issue.

"Performance" and "provided by ISP" are not concepts I usually associate with each other.

 

[logan893]

"Performance" and "provided by ISP" are not concepts I usually associate with each other.

True enough.

That's why I run my own pfSense router, and use the ISP-provided equipment for wireless only.