Slow transfer speeds?

[bluesky2006]

I've been transferring files from the 2TB on my old Synology 110j to my new unRAID build for just over a week now and it's still not done. I've been doing it on Windows 8 and my transfer speeds peak at about 2.8MB/s, using all wired connections. Is this slow? I'm aware that it won't be as fast as transferring directly to/from a PC - and I know nothing about this sort of thing - but I did some quick reading around and most people seem to be doing better than this!

 

Those of you curious as to my network devices, this is what I have in order from source to destination:

 

Synology 110j (Gigabit X1)

Thomson TG585v7 router (10/100BaseT HD/FD)

Via TP-Link TL-PA211KIT (200Mbps)

Windows 8 HTPC with a GIGABYTE GA-A75N-USB3 A75N-USB3 Motherboard (Gigabit LAN)

Back through the TP-Link TL-PA211KIT (200Mbps)

unRAID server with Asus C60M1-I Motherboard (1 x Gigabit LAN)

[tw332]

I've experinced very slow transfers (similar to yours) from my laptop to my unRAID box and established the issue (in my case) was my router.  If I take the router out of the equation, speeds increase dramatically.  Which is why I've added a new Gigabit switch/router to my shopping list for some time in the (hopefully, not too distant) future. 

[Joe L.]

I've been transferring files from the 2TB on my old Synology 110j to my new unRAID build for just over a week now and it's still not done. I've been doing it on Windows 8 and my transfer speeds peak at about 2.8MB/s, using all wired connections. Is this slow? I'm aware that it won't be as fast as transferring directly to/from a PC - and I know nothing about this sort of thing - but I did some quick reading around and most people seem to be doing better than this!

 

Those of you curious as to my network devices, this is what I have in order from source to destination:

 

Synology 110j (Gigabit X1)

Thomson TG585v7 router (10/100BaseT HD/FD)

Via TP-Link TL-PA211KIT (200Mbps)

Windows 8 HTPC with a GIGABYTE GA-A75N-USB3 A75N-USB3 Motherboard (Gigabit LAN)

Back through the TP-Link TL-PA211KIT (200Mbps)

unRAID server with Asus C60M1-I Motherboard (1 x Gigabit LAN)

Your TP-Link connections are probably doing way less than 200Mbps.  (That is ideal conditions, no other traffic or noise on the power line) I'll bet you are getting closer to 50Mbps, perhaps even less as 2.8MB/s indicates about 25Mbps.

 

Basically, since your switch and router are 100Mb/s, your entire LAN is limited to that speed, regardless of the potential speed of the server's motherboard.  The TP-Link connections are slowing you way down, especially with two of them.  They are half/duplex devices.  They cannot send and receive at the same time.  If they sense traffic is being sent, they must back off and wait for it to end.

 

Just be patient.  Invest in a Gigabit switch and connect as much as possible hard-wired with cat5e cabling through it.  Use the ports on the 100Mb/s router for devices that are 100MBps or slower. Connect 1 port on the router to the Gigabit switch and everything else possible to it, even if with temporary cables run down the halls to accomplish your initial file transfer. 

 

Joe L.

[neilt0]

Invest in a Gigabyte switch

gigabit.

[Joe L.]

Invest in a Gigabyte switch

gigabit.

Corrected... Thanks.

[bluesky2006]

Ok so looks like I need to procure a gigabit switch then!

 

My IT chum has also suggested I mount my Synology drive via NFS more directly to my unRAID server and copy the files over in the command line, so that I bypass my Windows 8 PC altogether, which certainly sounds like it would help cut out a lot of the speed loss. Does anyone have any experience/success with this in unRAID? Is it a fairly basic solution?

 

I tried mounting the drive using SNAP directly via USB but it didn't recognise the filesystem (my Synology uses ext4).

[bluesky2006]

Just to update on this...

 

I did indeed mount my Synology directly in the CLI by NFS, initiated the transfer using the cp command, and my copy speed went up to about 10MB/s! I've finally finished moving my data onto my unRAID server and can initiate the parity disk at last (not that I had to wait but I wanted it to be as quick as possible and I had the old data as backup if anything did go wrong).

 

In the meantime I've ordered that gigabit switch and some cat6 cables ,so hopefully things will improve for general network use in future now too!