Hyper slow transfer speeds

[squashem]

I'm a new unraid user. Have been using it for a week. I'm evaluating it at the moment, to see if it will suit my usage.

I love everything about unraid so far. But one thing has me bugged beyond anything,

 

Hyper slow transfer speeds. (2 MB/s over wifi, 35 MB/s over cat5e ethernet cable. Details below)

 

This is my Unraid configuration

• latest version. 6.3.1
  
• 3 disk array (1 parity)
  
• data disks are new. bought last year. but never used until last week
  
• parity disk also new. bought last year. but never used until last week
  
• 1 ssd cache. bought last year but never used until last week
  
• Gigabit LAN (or atleast thats what the networking section on the main tab tells me)
  
• 5 network interfaces (they were bonded by default. but I disabled bonding and disabled all interfaces except eth0. So eth1, eth2, eth3 and eth4 are disabled. Bridging is enabled)
  

 

This is my Local Network configuration

• Unraid connected to router via cat5e cables
  
• Test ubuntu machine connected to router via wifi
  
• After testing on wifi the same ubuntu machine was connected to router via cat5e cable with wifi disabled to test speeds on cable
  
• Test mac laptop connected to router via wifi
  
• Router is AC1750 TpLink. Supports gigabit speeds.(http://www.tp-link.com/us/products/details/cat-9_Archer-C7.html#specifications)
  
• All wifi used is IEEE 802.11ac/n/a 5GHz and NOT IEEE 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz. I mention this because AC1750 is dual band. But b/g/n is disabled cos it's slow as per spec
  

 

Test Setup

• I have a smb share called media on Unraid. Within that I have another folder called Movies.
  
• The "media" smb share is configured to use the SSD cache
  
• The "media" smb share is "secured"

 

Scenario 1 (Ubuntu laptop over wifi)

• Transfer movie from laptop to unraid share "media"
  
• Speed is 2MB/s. Grindingly slow
  

 

Scenario 2 (Ubuntu laptop over ethernet)

• Transfer movie from laptop to unraid share "media"
  
• Speed is 35MB/s. Slow.

 

Scenario 1 (Mac laptop over wifi)

• Transfer movie from laptop to unraid share "media"
  
• Speed is 2MB/s. Grindingly slow
  

 

Can someone please tell me how I might improve the speeds? If you need a zip of the diagnostic please let me know. I can run the tests again and send the diagnostics over.

More over, I've only mentioned the write tests (writing to unraid box). If read tests are required, let me know.

 

Thanks

 

 

 

[gubbgnutten]

Welcome!

 

35MB/s with gigabit and SSD cache sounds way too slow (when transferring a large file and not a load of tiny ones). The diagnostics zip would answer many questions about your setup and help rule out some common pitfalls.

 

A wired read test would be nice as well.

 

As for wi-fi, what speeds do you get for SMB between your laptops over wifi/wifi to ethernet?

[squashem]

Okay. So I did the tests again this evening after I got back from work. I don't know what to make of them. Now I'm more confused.

In any case, I'm attaching the diagnostics, in case they help.

 

Scenario 1 (Ubuntu wifi Test)

• write speed has not changed. same 2MB/s
  
• read speed is 7.5MB/s
  

 

Scenario 2 (Ubuntu ethernet Test)

• write test yesterday was 35MB/s. today I got 58-59MB/s writing 6 large files each 700MB avg. I performed this test thrice to make sure. So I got an average write speed of 58-59MB/s
  
• read test over ethernet 48.3MB/s. performed this test twice to make sure.
  

 

Scenario 3 (Mac Wifi Test)

• write test yesterday was 2MB/s. I don't know what I did today .. but I got 30MB/s write speed consistently
  
• read test was not done yesterday. But today I did it and got about 30MB/s read speed
  

 

So in summary my wifi write and read speeds on the Ubuntu machine still suck big time. Mac read and write speed over wifi are much better. But the best speeds I've got so far are on ubuntu over ethernet for both read and write.

I would like to perform the same test on mac over ethernet, but I don't have the usb to ethernet converter for the mac. I'll get one tomorrow and do the ethernet test for the mac if that helps.

 

In any case, the diagnostics are attached. All the tests were done between 8 and 8:30 PM

tower-diagnostics-20170215-2041.zip

[1812]

on 6.2.4, mac smb file sharing has always been about 35-45 write for me (to ram/ssd cache.) AFP yields closer to saturating gigabit over cat5e.

 

 

 

[John_M]

Wireless networking is for convenience, not performance. Even at the higher speeds it's shared by all the devices, while a cabled network is switched.

 

[squashem]

on 6.2.4, mac smb file sharing has always been about 35-45 write for me (to ram/ssd cache.) AFP yields closer to saturating gigabit over cat5e.

 

You mentioned using mac smb you were able to get between 35 and 45 MB/sec. was that wifi or over cat5e Ethernet?

[squashem]

Wireless networking is for convenience, not performance. Even at the higher speeds it's shared by all the devices, while a cabled network is switched.

 

But can it be as slow as 2MB/sec write and 7MB/sec read on the ubuntu box?

30MB read and write over wifi for the mac. Does that sound reasonable?

 

 

[John_M]

It can be as slow as zero. That's the trouble with wireless networking. It's prone to all sorts of issues and none of them ever improve the performance, only degrade it. It's ok for browsing the web on a tablet but for reliable networking you need cabled connections.

[1812]

on 6.2.4, mac smb file sharing has always been about 35-45 write for me (to ram/ssd cache.) AFP yields closer to saturating gigabit over cat5e.

 

You mentioned using mac smb you were able to get between 35 and 45 MB/sec. was that wifi or over cat5e Ethernet?

 

cat5e. I don't regularly try to benchmark wireless transfers speeds for moving "real" sizes of data. For me, wifi is for streaming and internet surfing, even on 5ghz. Anything that needs access to move files in the .25GB range and higher is always wired.

 

Now with that said, I just did a quick test: Using an n connection (via apple airport extreme time capsule,) through a wall, connected at a fluxatinxg 360-450mbps, I averaged 30MB/s read/write to a cache drive via smb with my MacBook pro, 3GB movie file. AFP pushed to 45MB/s read/write.

 

 

I would look at noise and signal strength of wifi first and eliminate that as a problem. I would also plug your mac into the network and connect to a cached share via AFP and see what your results are. Then proceed from that point.

[squashem]

Okay. So today I got the USB to ethernet converter for the Mac and ran a wired ethernet test.

So I was able to get consistent 85-90 MB/s write speeds on the ethernet. I think, with the networking hardware I have this is the best I can get.

What average write speeds do most folks my kind of hardware get?

 

Either way, I guess this proves that the network is not the bottleneck. And my wifi drivers or hardware on my ubuntu box is crap.

 

Or are my speeds still on the lower side?

 

 

 

[1812]

Gigabit theoretical is 125MB/s, with average optimal 100-115. You're probably experiencing some loss from the usb to ethernet adapter. I hit about 110-115MB/s on my usb 3 to gigabit adapter, but this is going from a usb3 card in an older enterprise server, into a business class router, then back out to another older enterprise server.

 

 

Either way, you're way faster now. Hard to say if your newfound minor limitation is the router, usb adapter, or the server's network adapter.

 

Was this smb or afp?

[squashem]

This is an SMB share on the Unraid box.

[1812]

Thats good since you're on 3.1. On 6.2.4, smb via mac was about 30-40MB/s for me on cat5e. You could try afp to see if it makes up the difference, if you care about the difference.

[squashem]

Thats good since you're on 3.1. On 6.2.4, smb via mac was about 30-40MB/s for me on cat5e. You could try afp to see if it makes up the difference, if you care about the difference.

 

3.1? You mean the smb version?

[1812]

no, the 6 key didn't register in my post, for unRaid version 6.3.1