Home network speed seems slow.

[tRidiot]

No I am trying to access the HTPC's shared storage folder from another computer to move files to it. - and yes, via drag and drop

I actually DID get the HTPC to show up for a while... couldn't access the shared folder however, in spite of having it manually set to share with everyone.

I read somewhere that all PCs have to be logged into a Windows account OR all PCs must be logged OUT of Windows account in order to share properly - so I logged in and promptly lost the HTPC again. But I CAN see it, access it and transfer to it from my laptop now... so I know the HTPC is set up properly. Now I just have to figure out how to access it from my wirelessly-connected desktop.

 

[The_Jizzler]

I am trying to access the HTPC's shared storage folder from another computer to move files to it/QUOTE]

So thats most likely the cause of slow traffic. The files are moving from nas->yourPC->HTPC. Try direct from the htpc and see what the speeds are.

As for the machines not showing up in the network part of explorer, make sure every machine is in the same workgroup, and from the machines not showing up, log into them and try to browse the network. Most likely you'll get a pop up saying network discovery not enabled, do you want to enable.... or something like that.

 

[tRidiot]

I am trying to access the HTPC's shared storage folder from another computer to move files to it/QUOTE]

So thats most likely the cause of slow traffic. The files are moving from nas->yourPC->HTPC. Try direct from the htpc and see what the speeds are.

As for the machines not showing up in the network part of explorer, make sure every machine is in the same workgroup, and from the machines not showing up, log into them and try to browse the network. Most likely you'll get a pop up saying network discovery not enabled, do you want to enable.... or something like that.

No, that's not it. I don't transfer that way. If I am moving from NAS->HTPC, I log into the HTPC and drag them in. I am talking about moving from the NVMe on my current wirelessly-connected PC to my hardwired HTPC. Whatever movement I do, I move only from one PC to the next, not trying to move them from a 3rd PC.

And I've already done the network discovery thing, all my PCs are all on the same Workgroup, all on the same network. I can see ALL of them FROM the HTPC and from my laptop. Something about my 2 other desktops I cannot see the HTPC, though I can see the laptop. It's screwy.


<edit> Now it's changed again... I just booted up my laptop AND my new PC and nothing is showing the HTPC. The other night I DID show the HTPC on the laptop, was able to access the storage folder and easily drag and drop files onto it.


Looking at my laptop, I see all 4 PCs on the network EXCEPT the HTPC. Same story for my desktop I am typing on right now.

I just went in and looked on the HTPC and it is showing SIX computers on the network... the same 4, plus one my son is gaming on and itself.

<facepalm>

 

[The_Jizzler]

Are the network discovery services running on those machines? Look for the ones with lldp in the services console

 

[tRidiot]

I just made sure they were running (they weren't), set in properties to start automatically and rebooted. Still no change. They show 4 PCs in the network.

The HTPC shows 6 including itself and my son's gaming desktop.

 

[The_Jizzler]

Are all the machines on the same network/subnet? Can you manually browse to the share by typing \\servername\share name in file explorer?

 

[tRidiot]

They are all in the same network called Workgroup. It's the basic standard one for Windows 10.

They have to be all on the same network and workgroup if my HTPC can see every other machine, right? And the laptop DID see the HTPC the other night - nothing has changed on the settings of EITHER of those machines. Literally nothing. I took my laptop to work, used it there, brought it home. That is it, same thing I do every day.

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

I do have to add....

A lot of this is probably a bit moot at this point, now that I have my HTPC set up, I can 'acquire' whatever I want onto that PC and then just set my NAS as backup. I shouldn't have great need to move files from my desktops to my NAS as I used to.

 

[tRidiot]

Argh. So I checked my HTPC this morning because Plex only seemed to be showing what I thought to be part of my collection. Turns out somehow only about 1/3 of it actually transferred off my NAS. So today I am moving another 3TB or so of movies... I swapped out one of my cables for another that 'looked' newer and was probably unused or lightly used. Speed this morning is atrocious at about 18-23MB/s. Yikes. Gonna take more than 24h to transfer those files from NAS to HTPC.

I don't have a crossover cable (that I can find) or a device to test my network cables. I guess this is something I should look into in the future. It's not the end of the world, just gonna take another day or so to finish transferring all my files. I wish I hadn't waited all this time to check, I coulda had this going overnight or last week. I'm just lazy and got a lot of various things going on.

BTW, moved one of my desktops into the living room and hardwired it into the router as well, still can't see the HTPC. So basically none of my PCs at this time - hardwired or wireless - can see my HTPC, but my HTPC can see everything else on the network. I don't know why. I'm kinda burned out on going through network settings over and over again and rechecking that everything is kosher. I'll go check the HTPC again and make sure it is set to discoverable, but I doubt I'm going to do much more than that.

 

[The_Jizzler]

The htpc visibility thing is either firewall or services. You checked services so must be firewalls. Were you ever able to try to get to the htpc from file explorer by using \\htpc_servername\sharename from you other machines

 

[tRidiot]

Yes, I was once able to type in the address and see the drive, I think that was also when I had it showing up before I logged into a MS account. I've since logged in and out of MS and into local account and back and nothing. I was able to SEE it when typing it in, but not able to actually access it - it asked for l/p even though it is specifically set to no passwords and open to everyone on the folder name. Go figure.

So this morning my speed was wonky again so I decided to do a little cable swap test... we like experiments and hard data, right? Right.



I set some files to transfer and it was running 18-23MB/s - crappy.

So I swapped out what looked like an old cable and got this:



Yikes, even worse!

So I swapped back and got the same thing. The same 11-12MB/s speed? HUH? Swapping back to the cables that WERE getting 18-23MB/s only 5 minutes earlier, I was running 11-12MB/s... with the SAME cables I had JUST been getting 20-23 on. In the same spots, I should say.


So the heck with this, I went to WalMart and picked up two BRAND NEW Cat6 cables from ONN. Hey, it's all there is, but it oughtta at least tell me if my old cables are having problems, right?

So here's what I got once I swapped BOTH cables for brand new Cat6 cables...




So obviously it looks like cables aren't changing anything.

Oh, and my firewalls are all disabled. I know because Windows has to warn me EVERY FIVE FREAKING MINUTES that my firewall is turned off. Yes, I know. Thanks.

So I'm kinda at a loss.

 

[The_Jizzler]

"I was able to SEE it when typing it in, but not able to actually access it - it asked for l/p even though it is specifically set to no passwords and open to everyone on the folder name. Go figure."

I think you would need anonymous and not everyone on the share and ntfs permissions

When you got to network adapter properties and look at details what does it say your auto negotiated speed is? Is there also a wifi adapter on these machines thats enabled? At this point I'd be scrutinizing drivers/nics

 

[tRidiot]

I checked the network adapter properties for the LAN on the HTPC and it says 1000/1000 (Mbps).

On the machine I am on right now it is a wireless and says 144/144 (Mbps)... earlier today this same one said 650 or something (this is a PCI WiFi6 AX200 adapter). I have seen as fast as 880 I believe on my new machine which has WiFi 6 built in to the motherboard.

Just checked the NAS through the ReadyNAS software and it says eth0 is connected at 1000Mbps with MTU 1500. eth1 is not connected... should I connect that to have dual Gb ethernet ports running? Obviously they would have separate IP addresses on the network, would my NAS show up twice if I did that? Not sure if that would help any at all with speeds, I would doubt it, but I don't know.

The H81 motherboard on my HTPC is a Realtek LAN chip, which I've recently read isn't the best out there, but I always assumed it was great because it was so commonly used - now I'm guessing it's because it's cheap and relatively stable so many MB manufactures used it on their middle of the road boards. Although now that I look, my ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero also uses a Realtek 2.5GB LAN. Man how I wish I could take advantage of THAT for all my machines these days. lol


Hell, all this has me thinking about running fiber in my house... talk about crazy...

<edit> And I'm trying to read up now on NTFS permissions vs shares. Got a lot more to learn.

 

[tRidiot]

I spent some time reading through this article from Tom's Hardware which is really nicely done in terms of explaining simply to a relative n00b like me the various aspects of file transfer over a network.

I guess I need to get used to the slower speeds, it's ok. Like I said before, once I get all this media transferred it'll be a pretty moot point. I'm more irritated by the HTPC not showing up on the network - but again, with the HTPC being able to take care of itself, I no longer need to create media on another PC and then transfer it TO the NAS like I was before. So that'll be ok.

Overall it should be fine, I'm just trying to learn about this stuff as I go so I understand it. It seems like my network isn't performing all that great, but now I understand a lot more of the why behind some of that.

 

[Railgun]

In your previous thread I’d already mentioned what you “might” get out of that particular NAS. I’d suggest upgrading if you really want the performance.