Home network speed seems slow.

[tRidiot]

So I'm not much on networking, but my home speed has always seemed slow to me.

For instance, I am transferring 1TB of files (TV shows) from my NAS to my new HTPC. NAS is a RAID5 4-disk array in a Netgear ReadyNAS 104. HTPC is a new Windows10 install on a 500GB SSD with a 12TB 7200RPM single drive for storage.

ReadyNAS 104 has GbE and so does the HTPC (H81 motherboard) both connected via Ethernet cable to my Netgear AC1900 router directly. Also have a switch for some other devices, but these two are both hardwired directly into the ports on the router and are no more than 5 feet via Ethernet to the router.

Transfer speed right now is running about 34MB/sec. This just seems slow to me.

Moving files from my computer in the back room connected via 5GHz WiFi usually runs no more than 30MB/s, sometimes as low as 8-10. From my laptop in the same room, I also never get more than about 30MB/s transferring to my NAS.

I'm not sure where to begin to troubleshoot this. Or if this is considered normal? I wouldn't think so, but I don't really know.

 

[Railgun]

First, see what the NAS is actually capable of. As alluded to in the other thread, out of the box the thing can do maybe 40-80MBps. Wether that’s possible in its current configuration I don’t know.

 

[tRidiot]

I noticed yesterday it was going from an avg of about 34-35MB/s to some sustained for a minute or two of around 50MB/s and sometimes dropping into the 20s. Either way, it's pretty well moot at this point, I'm only going to use it for backup probably - not likely to need any more long sustained large reads/writes on it.

 

[stompah]

Every time you complain about something your NAS is attached to your complaint. Did you get a bum unit or was it just designed to be slow? I will also say your posts have really turned me off to building my own NAS. Seems like more trouble than it is worth.

Please do not take my post as offense, just an observation about your experience with your NAS.

Have you considered direct connection between the NAS and HTPC via patch cable?

 

[habbajabba]

You need 10GBe ports on all your boxes if you want truly faster speeds. GBe is what ships with every pc and to patch direct to the nas would require dual GBe ports on the pc. I get ~ 65-69MB/s between my nas and my pc and that's with the 'tv' running in the background but I don't think that makes much difference. Personally I love my pci-e wifi ap card qnap makes for the nas. I get about 37MB/s transfer rate (average 21) over it and it doesn't affect the router at all, of course..
I have no more room for a 10GBe card as I'd have to remove the wifi AP card and that's just too dern useful to replace with a 10GBe one requiring a cable.
I can stream anything without any lag at all using just my AP on the nas. As soon as I get another laptop I'm really going to put it to use. Right now it's used for my droid devices which works awesome.
Definitely your speeds are slow if you're getting half of what I'm getting. But, my nas uses a "qtier" strategy wherein it utilizes all the drives, the nvme's, the m.2 cache ones as well, not just the ironwolf pro's my media is on so possibly that might make the difference here. SSD drives would be faster too but they are super expensive. 12TB would cost like a few grand no doubt. Every little bit counts.
Looking at the netgear readynas it only supports standard drives (sata or ssd's) so it's definitely going direct from drive to drive over your network but still those speeds are slow to me as well.
One site says it only has 512MB of ram (not even a gig? WTF?) so that right there is the problem. I have 32GB's and can put another 32 in mine. $1000 for that thing. You got jipped. I'd see about upping the memory massively or selling it to someone who doesn't care.
Everything it does, and I mean everything, has to go through the memory and you have like none. Yeah it works but don't expect to transfer massive TB's to and from without packing a lunch. The cpu is only a 1.2GHz as well so it's basic at best. Just enough to make it work and that's all folks. The ONLY thing it looks like you can change are the drives you put in it. You should have just built a box instead and used freenas or whatever. Netgear made that to make money. Nas's they do not. For what it costs you could have had 10GBe ports and butt-tons of memory AND a fast cpu. Not to be a letdown but be happy it works and has a 3yr wrrty. Still if you can up the memory and the cpu (I doubt it) you need to.

 

[tRidiot]

Every time you complain about something your NAS is attached to your complaint. Did you get a bum unit or was it just designed to be slow? I will also say your posts have really turned me off to building my own NAS. Seems like more trouble than it is worth.

Please do not take my post as offense, just an observation about your experience with your NAS.

Have you considered direct connection between the NAS and HTPC via patch cable?

Sorry man. Like I said above, I'm not a networking guy.

It seems my speeds may not be that far off from what might be expected, but I just thought they should be faster. I don't know.

I'm sorry if you feel I am 'complaining'... I thought this was a community to discuss things, to learn, maybe improve performance. I'll cut it out, it's not that important and apparently it's aggravating to people, so it's cool.

<edit> Don't think I'm mad, I'm not. I just don't want to be 'that guy' that people think is a moron who does everything wrong and doesn't know ****e from shinola. So maybe it's best to just shut up and read from now on, or for a while.

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

You need 10GBe ports on all your boxes if you want truly faster speeds. GBe is what ships with every pc and to patch direct to the nas would require dual GBe ports on the pc. I get ~ 65-69MB/s between my nas and my pc and that's with the 'tv' running in the background but I don't think that makes much difference. Personally I love my pci-e wifi ap card qnap makes for the nas. I get about 37MB/s transfer rate (average 21) over it and it doesn't affect the router at all, of course..
I have no more room for a 10GBe card as I'd have to remove the wifi AP card and that's just too dern useful to replace with a 10GBe one requiring a cable.
I can stream anything without any lag at all using just my AP on the nas. As soon as I get another laptop I'm really going to put it to use. Right now it's used for my droid devices which works awesome.
Definitely your speeds are slow if you're getting half of what I'm getting. But, my nas uses a "qtier" strategy wherein it utilizes all the drives, the nvme's, the m.2 cache ones as well, not just the ironwolf pro's my media is on so possibly that might make the difference here. SSD drives would be faster too but they are super expensive. 12TB would cost like a few grand no doubt. Every little bit counts.
Looking at the netgear readynas it only supports standard drives (sata or ssd's) so it's definitely going direct from drive to drive over your network but still those speeds are slow to me as well.
One site says it only has 512MB of ram (not even a gig? WTF?) so that right there is the problem. I have 32GB's and can put another 32 in mine. $1000 for that thing. You got jipped. I'd see about upping the memory massively or selling it to someone who doesn't care.
Everything it does, and I mean everything, has to go through the memory and you have like none. Yeah it works but don't expect to transfer massive TB's to and from without packing a lunch. The cpu is only a 1.2GHz as well so it's basic at best. Just enough to make it work and that's all folks. The ONLY thing it looks like you can change are the drives you put in it. You should have just built a box instead and used freenas or whatever. Netgear made that to make money. Nas's they do not. For what it costs you could have had 10GBe ports and butt-tons of memory AND a fast cpu. Not to be a letdown but be happy it works and has a 3yr wrrty. Still if you can up the memory and the cpu (I doubt it) you need to.

This is kinda what I was looking for... information that says "here is what I am getting, too." Maybe my speeds aren't that bad - my expectations might have been unrealistic.

Sorry. I'm not going to replace motherboards on stuff for 10GB ethernet, it's not that big of a deal.

 

[stompah]

That's why added the line about don't take offense. Seriously, don't take offense to it. It wasn't the best choice of words on my part. I just noticed that every issue you've had the NAS is involved.

 

[habbajabba]

The nas he has is dead simple. I'm pretty sure his slow transfer rates are due to the utter lack of memory. The cpu is just fast enough to run it. It raids, it pushes the data fast enough to stream. That's it. I never suggested replacing the mobo. Memory is cheap and so are decent cpu's for that matter. It really sucks if they built it with the memory soldered in. The one thing I can't replace on mine is the cpu. However I bought it because it didn't require an optional video card which are $$$. Mine does everything I wanted it to out of the box with no networking skills required. I could have built one but didn't want the headache of building a complete new pc and then also having to learn all the new software. Too much trouble for me atm. The one thing I hate about mine is the google chrome "HybridDesk" station. It allows me to use it as a pc with a monitor mouse and keyboard. But if I did that it could have been renamed to "glorified chrome network appliance". That is not gonna happen ever. I only leave the hybrid station installed in case I can't login. That's it. Now I run backups of it's config just in case I screw it up somehow. I did that once and the qnap guy had to teamviewer in and then use a terminal window to reset my network. Then I had to copy my data off and then back on to get it back to normal using winssh. PITA, and all because I had no backups and hd station wasn't installed. Qnap tech support flat out ROCKS!. If it wasn't for them I'd have had to start completely over and may have lost data. Data I spent years collecting. Saved my ***!
I don't care who you are. If you have tons of data you need a nas. If you are young and have the time and energy I'd build my own. If not a qnap or synology works a bit easier. Plus my nas uses about 35 watts compared to a full blown pc with video card and what not using 3-4 times that. If I had the time I'd make a nas using a pi4. But again I do not have the time now. A pi4 will stream 4K all day long and transcode if necessary. All my vids are 1080 except for a single blackNwhite Star Wars file I have which I think is 4K, not sure.

 

[tRidiot]

I think I'm pretty good now the way things are configured, I just was hoping my transfer speeds would be better. Not a big deal. But now that everything is moved over to my HTPC for serving, it should be fine, although I've got some Plex bugs to work out.

I can't log into my HTPC to transfer files directly from another computer though... I set it up with no password, and some things I found Googling I think suggested without a password you may not be able to access that PC from elsewhere on the network. I'd like to just be able to drag and drop from another PC onto the HTPC's HDD the way I used to my NAS. Does anyone know if this is the case? When trying to access the HTPC from one of my other computers it asks for an l/p which doesn't exist. Haven't tried it yet, just curious if anyone knows.

 

[wagex]

You need 10GBe ports on all your boxes if you want truly faster speeds.

GBe should be getting ~125MB/s hardwired, that's what I get to and from my NAS, it shouldn't be his network slowing him down as long as everything is connected using gigabit hardware (switches and router ect).

I'd like to just be able to drag and drop from another PC onto the HTPC's HDD the way I used to my NAS. Does anyone know if this is the case? When trying to access the HTPC from one of my other computers it asks for an l/p which doesn't exist. Haven't tried it yet, just curious if anyone knows.

go into network settings and check the box next to " turn on sharing so anyone with network access can read adn write files in the public folders"
then share a folder with the user "everyone" as an allowed user in the security and access permissions.

 

[tRidiot]

GBe should be getting ~125MB/s hardwired, that's what I get to and from my NAS, it shouldn't be his network slowing him down as long as everything is connected using gigabit hardware (switches and router ect).



go into network settings and check the box next to " turn on sharing so anyone with network access can read adn write files in the public folders"
then share a folder with the user "everyone" as an allowed user in the security and access permissions.

Ahh ok, I think I have some of that done, but I will try to look into it tonight. Thanks for the tip.

As for speeds, I dunno. Everything is GBe - H81 MB, NAS has dual GBe and router is a Nighthawk AC1900. Maybe I should buy new cables - all my cables are old old. I saw in another thread that made a difference. I figured they would work or not work, not be 'degraded' by age or condition. They LOOK ok, but I know that doesn't mean the internal wiring is all good.

I'll order some new CAT5e cable runs (and a patch cable) to try things out with.

 

[Ploaf]

I'm sorry if you feel I am 'complaining'... I thought this was a community to discuss things, to learn, maybe improve performance. I'll cut it out, it's not that important and apparently it's aggravating to people, so it's cool.

I think he meant the common denominator to different issues you mentioned is the NAS. Everyone here has hardare complaints at times.

Changing the cables could yield positive results. Not a guarantee. I've had this issue often over the years and new cables often help, but I'm forced to move a lot, so the cables take a beating.

 

[tRidiot]

I understand my NAS is not a high end item. And part of all this started with me looking to replace it, but I decided having a NAS and a sever separately were probably a better option for me, especially considering I had some extra hardware lying around I could utilize in a server. And now I have a backup as well. So I'm overall pretty please, but I would like to get better network speeds overall.

I think I'm going to upgrade my router to a WiFi6 model, too... I've got several WiFi 6 connections on desktops, but not a WiFi6 router.

 

[Super Nade]

Perhaps I misread your post, but it is not clear what troubleshooting sequence you followed? For example, my home network is setup as:

Cable Modem --> pfSense --> Switch ---> Wifi router for WiFi devices, 5000baseT-PC1, 1000baseT-PC2

Yesterday, on a Speedtest on PC1 I measured only 95 Mbps instead of the 800Mbps I expected. I had switched out Cat5e with Cat8 (unnecessary, but I am planning on a homebrew Fiber LAN setup in the future) and made a host of pfSense firewall changes. I wasn't sure if the drop in bandwidth was hardware or software (pfSense) related.

Troubleshooting setup:
Cable Modem ---> DUT (device under test) --->PC1
I started adding to the DUT sequentially based on my original configuration, starting with the switch, pFsense and then the Wifi router. It turned out one of the Cat8 cables was bad which caused the link to down-negotiate to 100baseT. Once I replaced the cable, all was back to normal!

The point I am trying to make is that you should troubleshoot your network with a MWE (minimum working example) and then start adding to it. It is more efficient to be systematic.

Good luck!

 

[tRidiot]

The way it is set up now is both my HTPC and my NAS are hardwired directly to my router. All connections are 1GBe. Speed generally runs on this around 30-35MB/s, will occ increase for a few minutes to 50MB/s, but only sustain that way for a minute or two and go back to the 30-35MB/s. No switches involved (with these two devices).

Like I said, I am going to order some new cables and see... I've tried at various times a bunch of different cables I have 'lying around' from several decades of builds. Nothing 'high end' in terms of cables or even specifically purchased - they have all come with the purchase of devices/equipment such as routers, modems, various gaming systems, etc.

Best transfer rates I can get from a wireless connection are in the 30MB/s speed range from a laptop through the router to the NAS or from a wirelessly-connected desktop through the router to the NAS, regardless of connection speed wirelessly. For instance my new PC I just built is showing connection speed wirelessly of 800+Mb/s most of the time and the transfer speed doesn't change.

I spent about an hour and a half last night trying to get my HTPC to show up on the home network so I can transfer directly to it, but I can't seem to. It was annoying going back and forth from the living room to the office to see if it was showing up with each change in settings/reboot, etc. I forgot my laptop at work, which would have removed alot of that hassle... I will bring it home tonight for sure.

I shared files, I shared folders, I disabled Windows firewall, I shared everything on the network, I CANNOT get the HTPC to show up. It is now (sometimes) showing up on the network to ITSELF - meaning when I pull up This PC and click on Network it shows other computers on the network as well as itself - but the other computers DO NOT see it when I pull up This PC-->Network on them. Funny... sharing media files, the other computers can play media from it, but this is showing up under a different section, just shared media, not showing the actual PC in the network, which is what I want, so I can write directly to the HTPC's storage drive.


What really gets me is this is totally different behavior from one computer to the next in spite of identical new installations of Windows 10. On my new Leviathan PC, I installed Windows and connected to the network, it was off and running and shows up fine in the network. The HTPC is the exact opposite. I'm debating tossing the HARDWARE since it is an old H81 motherboard and relocating my old i7-6700k/Z170 system into the HTPC. It would be an easy swap and new Windows install and just keep the 12TB HDD and GTX 1060.

 

[The_Jizzler]

How are you copying these files? Could be bad cables or punches if there are any jacks involved

 

[tRidiot]

I just drag and drop from within Windows.

I did manage to get my HTPC to show up now, for some computers. Not the one that matters the most to me, which is the one in the back room I spend most of my time at.

I am hopeful, though, I will spend some more time on it this weekend.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

Ahh ok, I think I have some of that done, but I will try to look into it tonight. Thanks for the tip.

As for speeds, I dunno. Everything is GBe - H81 MB, NAS has dual GBe and router is a Nighthawk AC1900. Maybe I should buy new cables - all my cables are old old. I saw in another thread that made a difference. I figured they would work or not work, not be 'degraded' by age or condition. They LOOK ok, but I know that doesn't mean the internal wiring is all good.

I'll order some new CAT5e cable runs (and a patch cable) to try things out with.

How old is your old cables? cat5 100mb?
If your running 1gb on your LAN, scrap cat5e, go with cat6, 6e, 6A. Also when transferring files, the larger the file the better your speed, small files slow the transfer down because it takes time to write each file name to the directory (folder) as well as copy the file.
Oh, RAID also slows things down a bit when writing to a raid.

 

[tRidiot]

Cables are old, some older some newer. Some may be 10y+, some may be a year.

Files are all large. Some writing to RAID, some reading from RAID.

 

[The_Jizzler]

So just to clarify, you log into the htpc locally and doing the drag and drop?,or are you browsing the network to one folder then drag and dropping to another networked folder from another pc?