Why is my Unraid file transfers are so slow compared to others?


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My Cat6 cables arrived today (one 10 foot and one 100 foot), and I installed them.  My network now looks like:

 

unRAID server ------Cat6 (100 ft)------ D-Link DIR655 ---------Cat6 (10 ft)-------- Desktop (Vista x64)

 

The router connects to my cable modem (5 Mbit connection) with Cat5 cable, but I figured this wouldn't matter.

 

So everything on the LAN is now GigE over Cat6 - optimal, right?

 

I haven't done any extensive testing yet, but at first glance I do notice an improvement in the transfer speed from my desktop to my unRAID server (haven't tried the reverse yet).  My speeds went up from ~14 Mb/s to ~18 Mb/s on disk shares, and stayed at ~14 Mb/s on user shares (so no change there).  Not a staggering improvement, but improvement none-the-less. 

 

Why I'm really pleased is that initiating multiple transfers simultaneously doesn't cause all but one to drop into the Kb/s range.  Instead, they all stay at an acceptable rate (maybe 8 - 14 Mb/s).  This confuses me slightly, since I thought the PCI bus was the bottleneck preventing simultaneous transfers at acceptable speeds, but as long as it works, I won't worry about it.  Everything I was transferring was to one drive, so perhaps if I started multiple transfers to multiple drives on the PCI bus I would see the extreme slowdowns I'm used to.

 

So I didn't quite achieve the 30-40 Mb/s transfer speeds I was hoping for, but I'm not too concerned, at least its now fast enough to not bother me.

 

Was it worth the $20 I spent on cables and shipping?  Yes, especially since I now have the super long cable that will allow me to place my unRAID server in the backroom, basement, on the moon, you know, wherever I feel like.  So in short, good advice guys, and thank you.

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