Transfer Speeds stuck at 5MB/s

[JJ1989]

Good Afternoon,

I am trying to write from my PC to my FreeNAS system to test the speeds after having set it up and I'm only getting just under 5MB/s writing to the server and just over 5MB/s reading from the server on a gig interface.

Here are the specs for my NAS system:

(From Newegg)
1 x ($24.99) PSU ROSEWILL|RV350 350W RTL $24.99


1 x ($44.99) MB MSI|NF725GM-P43 NF7025 AM3 R $44.99


1 x ($29.99) CASE ROSEWILL|R101-P-BK RT $29.99


1 x ($64.99) CPU AMD|ATH II X2 260 3.2G AM3 RT $64.99


1 x ($34.99) MEM 4Gx2|GSKILL F3-8500CL7D-8GBRL R $34.99

(From Ebay)

1 x Western Digital Caviar 2 TB,Internal (WD20EARS) HD (170750175504)

2 x Serial ATA Sata II 2 2.0 3Gb/s 3Gbps Data Hard Disk Drive Cable HDD RAID CD-ROM (270857405016)

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My router is: Cisco Linksys WRT310N Wireless-N Gigabit Router

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I pressed 9 on the server to get into the console and ran the command ifconfig re0 (ifconfig -a grep media doesn't really do anything except tell me the parameters for the ifconfig command, but is what you're told to run at http://www.freenas.org/images/resou...guide_web.html#__RefHeading__10061_2120221432 so I don't know if I was doing something wrong.) Anyhow, my media is listed as Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>) so I think that's good? I don't know how to change that and would require step by step instructions as the how-tos "add to the interface settings" kinda confuses me.

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I am running the 2TB drives mirrored with ZFS. Do I need a special ethernet cable to connect the server to the router? I just have ~10ft of your regular Walmart brand running right now.

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Any assistance in increasing the speed would be greatly appreciated, if you could please assist at your earliest convenience. I would be glad to give you anymore information if you need it and assist in anyway I can.

 

[Daisuke]

When you install FreeNAS in your USB stick, you don't have to configure anything... it will work out of the box with default settings. What do you use to transfer data from NAS to your computer? CIFS, NFS, AFP? Since you don't have a lot of experience with the console, use the GUI instead. Start by destroying your array and revert everything to stock, related to options.
Settings > Factory Restore

With everything default, start troubleshooting your setup. You need to see where is the bottleneck: Local disk - Network - Network disk
You can have the fastest NAS, if your local disks are spinning slow you cannot read data from your network drives fast.

My network drive stats (see setup):

Code:

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/nas/media/tmp.dat bs=2048k count=50k
51200+0 records in
51200+0 records out
107374182400 bytes transferred in 602.091800 secs (178335235 bytes/sec)

$ dd if=/mnt/nas/media/tmp.dat of=/dev/null bs=2048k count=50k
51200+0 records in
51200+0 records out
107374182400 bytes transferred in 363.791025 secs (295153467 bytes/sec)

Doing the math, this tells me that I write to the ZFS RaidZ2 array at 170MB/sec and read at 280MB/sec. Considering that my disks can push individually maximum 300MB/sec worth of data, the results are very good. However, since I run everything through a 1Gbit network card, the maximum reads/writes I can achieve are 128MB/sec. Considering the network degradation, you end-up with results similar to 110-120MB/sec reads.

If you run Linux, use tools like iperf or iptraf to see your network usage live. In Windows, the Task Manager will show you the network usage.

Last, check your local disk performance. Based on this info as well spending Google search time galore, you will learn how to troubleshoot your network and discover where exactly is the bottleneck. There is no copy/paste fix in Networking, you have to learn it and spend time testing everything.

To get you started, look at FreeNAS dmesg output and see how your disks are reported. At least you will know if FreeNAS sees them at their proper speed. Here it is an example how mines look:

Code:

ada0 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
ada0: <M4-CT064M4SSD2 0009> ATA-9 SATA 3.x deviceda0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus14 target 0 lun 0
da0: < Patriot Memory PMAP> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device 
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 3824MB (7831552 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 487C)

ada0: 600.000MB/s transfers (SATA 3.x, UDMA5, PIO 8192bytes)
ada0: Command Queueing enabled
ada0: 61057MB (125045424 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)

ada1 at ahcich8 bus 0 scbus8 target 0 lun 0
ada1: <WDC WD20EARS-00MXQA0 51.0AB51> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device
ada1: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada1: Command Queueing enabled
ada1: 1907729MB (3907029168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)
...
ada6 at ahcich13 bus 0 scbus13 target 0 lun 0
ada6: <WDC WD20EARS-00MXQA0 51.0AB51> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device
ada6: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada6: Command Queueing enabled
ada6: 1907729MB (3907029168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)

 

[JJ1989]

System Restore ended up rebooting the server and giving me the message "This is a FreeNAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted."

I tried hard rebooting, rebooting after removing and reinstering the USB disk to no avail, so I am in the process of rewriting 8.03 onto the USB disk but I gotta leave for work in a few minutes and I don't think I'm going to finish.

So here's what I understand:

Go back and recreate my mirrored ZFS raid then reset up the CIFS share like I had it before. (Mine was really all guest access, I couldn't figure out how to set it up with user accounts otherwise it just kept denying me, which is ok I guess on my home network).

How do I get to those read outs though? Of the network drive stats? Of my local disk performance? and it sounds like I'm going to have to transfer a few files first, I was just using the explorer and typing in \\192.168.*.* then dragging and dropping a file in, with windows 7 I click the little "more information" arrow and it was telling me my traffic was ~5MB/s.

 

[JJ1989]

Managed to get a few extra minutes: I'm currently transferring a file and getting ~4.5MB/s and under task manager my network speed is ~60% utilized with a link speed of 75Mb/s. So I would need a new network card in my laptop in order to transfer any faster than oh say ~9MB/s then? Still, why aren't I getting that 9MB/s...Still appreciate knowing how to get those other read outs :) (and how to understand them) Thanks!!

 

[Daisuke]

There you have it, your network card is a 100Mbit not 1000Mbit.
What does your device manager tells you about your card, is it a Gigabit one? 100Mbit = 12MB

The important part is to test your actual NAS and see how fast it an read/write, who cares about other computers. If your NAS is slow, you need to fix the problem at root.

Upgrade ASAP and use a decent Intel card (i.e. EXPI9301CT).
Edit: I just saw that you mentioned the word 'laptop'... :D

 

[JJ1989]

:D Yeah my laptop that I'm trying to transfer the files from has an Atheros AR9285 802.11b/g/n Wifi Adapter, of course I'm at work now and connecting through my 3g phone via usb cable with a link speed of 144Mb/s according to task manager..strange how my link speed is faster through my phone supposedly, but at home I get way faster speeds with comcasts 75Mb/s link speed. Anyways, that's off topic. When I do get some time tomorrow or Thursday how do I get to those readings you mentioned to try and determine if I can see where the NAS bottle neck is? Thanks again, I appreciate.

 

[ProtoSD]

Perhaps this question in the FAQ will help ;) If you're using Wifi, that's your problem.

http://protosd.blogspot.com/2011/12/protosds-unofficial-freenas-8-faq.html#q18

 

[JJ1989]

I appreciate your speedy reply protosd, but the wifi we are referring to is the wifi of the laptop I am trying to transfer the files to the server, it's my everyday PC. I appologize for the misunderstanding. The NAS server has a gigabit LAN which is connected by LAN cable to a WRT310N gigabit router. I should be getting more fast speeds right? It must be my disks/array/controller? My disks are 5400rpms and 300GB/s I believe, I listed them above. My array is just a mirrored raid with ZFS? I'm not using a controller, the disks are plugged right into the motherboard. My Ram is 8gb, should be plenty sufficient, and a 3.2ghz processor should be enough too. I just don't know what it could be? How would I troubleshoot this?

 

[ProtoSD]

How would I troubleshoot this?

At the end of the answer to the FAQ link I pointed you to above, there is ANOTHER link that shows you how to use the built in network performance tool in FreeNAS, "iperf".

Also, I didn't see where you mentioned which version of FreeNAS you're using. I'd use 8.03 and upgrade to 8.03-p1 when it's released (any day now).

There are also some "Auxiallary Parameters" for CIFS under the Services->Control Services-CIFS in the GUI on the left sidebar that could use some tweaking possibly.

Do you have AIO (checkbox) enabled?

Those are just a few places to get you started.

 

[JJ1989]

I am using 8.03 :)

Ok so I didn't see where the link specifically stated how to use iperf but I figured out how to run it, here are my results:

Client connecting to 192.168.1.102, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
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[164] local 192.168.1.125 port 59937 connected with 192.168.1.102 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[164] 0.0-10.0 sec 28.7 MBytes 24.0 Mbits/sec

For the hardware I have, that's ridiculously slow.

AIO is checked. I tried unchecking it, I tried unselecting send files with send to file, I'm still getting about those same results every time. What else could it be that I could try to tweak? Any other information I could give to be of help?

 

[JJ1989]

Any Ideas?

 

[JJ1989]

I tried doing another factory reset and this time I created a striped UFS volume, still only 5MB/s :(

 

[ProtoSD]

Based on the results from Iperf, it has to be your network. It's got to be a network card at either end, a bad cable, or your router/switch.

 

[JJ1989]

My wireless card in the laptop with which I am connecting to the server can handle up to 150Mb/s, or ~18MB/s so that's where my bottleneck SHOULD be. I tried using a different LAN cable to connect the server to the router, no improvement. I tried using an old 10/100 wireless g router and wired both this laptop and the server to it, it should have been the bottleneck then at ~12MB/s if it had been my router causing the problem - but still only 5MB/s. I then was a dumbass and tried to put a PCI gigabit card onto my MOBO's PCI1 slot, it fit, but no power to it - anyways, the chipset for the MOBOs gigabit LAN is RTL8111E and RTL8111 based fast ethernet and gigabit adapters are supported by FreeBSD 8.2. SO then I thought maybe it was the two for two dollar SATA II connectors I got from China, but swapping one out for a higher quality sata connector and disconnecting the other HDD while commencing with a factory reset and loading just the single HDD into Freenas still got me only 5.0MB/s. I tried using my wifes Acer Aspire One and it's speeds are also the same, peaking out just under 5.0MB/s.

 

[ProtoSD]

The iperf test completely skips anything to do with your disks, it's a raw network speed test between FreeNAS and the pc you are testing it with, so it really is specifically a network related problem.

You should be able to directly connect your laptop to your FreeNAS server with a crossover cable, set a different static ip for each one on the same network (like 192.168.1.5 & 192.168.1.10), change the default gateway of each to the IP of the other and see what iperf says.

 

[Brand]

You should be able to directly connect your laptop to your FreeNAS server with a crossover cable, set a different static ip for each one on the same network (like 192.168.1.5 & 192.168.1.10), change the default gateway of each to the IP of the other and see what iperf says.

Since both computers are on the same network there is no need to even set the gateway.

 

[JJ1989]

I don't have a cross over cable and neither Walmart or Meijers sells one, them being the only two places open right now, so I'll have to try tomorrow. I did, however, get the other networking card to work. According to Iperf though I'm still only getting 27.9 MB transfer and 23.4Mbit/sec Bandwith, The NIC is a NetGear GA311

 

[JJ1989]

So basically I just plug one side of the crossover cable into my laptop and one side into my server and run iperf? How do I set a different static IP on windows 7 or on freenas?

 

[ProtoSD]

So basically I just plug one side of the crossover cable into my laptop and one side into my server and run iperf? How do I set a different static IP on windows 7 or on freenas?

Unless you have a monitor/keyboard hooked up to your NAS, you'd need to set the IP from the Web GUI before you change your IP to static on your laptop.

I can't talk you through changing your IP to static on Win7 from the GUI, but if you open an 'elevated' DOS/Command prompt, you would just type:

netsh interface ipv4 set address “local area connection” static 192.168.1.10 or whatever address you want to use

and to set it back to DHCP after you finish you'd type:

netsh interface ipv4 set address name=”local area connection” source=dhcp

netsh interface ipv4 set dnsservers name=”local area connection” source=dhcp

 

[Fornax]

A few thoughts:

You say: "I just have ~10ft of your regular Walmart brand running right now."
What writing is printed on the cable itself? Cat5, Cat5E, Cat6, CAT6A, CAT6E? STP, UTP?

For Fast Ethernet (100Mb) you needed a crossover cable if connecting 2 nics directly, for gigabit this is not needed.
When using the switch, what do the lights on the switch tell you for the connections? Are both the PC and the Freenas connecting at 1000Mb according to the switch?

Trying just 1 disk with a totaly different filesystem was a good idea. The speed again being 5MB/s pretty much points to a problem with the networking somewhere and not another subsystem.

As of your post #10: 24 megabits per second is not good. First suspect here would be the cables, try other cables (borrow some from friends/neighbours). Another option could be to force 100Mb/s on the NIC's and see what speed you get with that.