Why such slow speeds on Synology DS213?

[bodean]

Both Windows pc and NAS are hooked up to my ASUS AC66U router via cat5e cables
Been moving movies and files all day (drag/drop into file station) and averaging 5-12MB/s

Is this normal speed?

My MB, ASUS p8z68-v/gen3 has gigabyte nic card, its set to that/full duplex in windows 8. Jumbo Frames is off on it, router, and the NAS. Seems the speeds are not very fast at all. I doubt my Bitdefender Security suite (AV/Firewall) is contributing to this slow speed. Suggestions?

 

[stevech]

test speed by using a very fast PC, good gigE LAN via a switch, not the switch ports of a consumer Router, not using WiFi, and most importantly, assess speed using file with 100's of MB. Or a GB.
Moving lots of small files has a huge amount of overhead in the SMB and file systems.

Jumbo frames not needed. With the DS212, and big files, I see 50-80MB/s read and 10-20% slower for writes, and it depends on whether the file is going into or out of the NAS.
PC speed makes a difference, I've seen. With lots of small files, speed will be about 3-15MB/s, all other things equal.

 

[PrivateJoker]

test speed by using a very fast PC, good gigE LAN via a switch, not the switch ports of a consumer Router, not using WiFi, and most importantly, assess speed using file with 100's of MB. Or a GB.
Moving lots of small files has a huge amount of overhead in the SMB and file systems.
<snip snip>

However, the top of the line asus switches are rated on SNB for some crazy fast LAN throughoutput.

Should I be plugging my NAS into my downstream gigabit switch instead of direct to router? Especially because a lot of my activity to NAS is wifi??

I've also noticed that in almost every iterative update of DSM (4, 4.1, 4.2, etc) I get a noticeable boost in NAS txfr speeds. A claim they make, and i actually see in real world.

 

[whsbuss]

test speed by using a very fast PC, good gigE LAN via a switch, not the switch ports of a consumer Router, not using WiFi, and most importantly, assess speed using file with 100's of MB. Or a GB.
Moving lots of small files has a huge amount of overhead in the SMB and file systems.

Jumbo frames not needed. With the DS212, and big files, I see 50-80MB/s read and 10-20% slower for writes, and it depends on whether the file is going into or out of the NAS.
PC speed makes a difference, I've seen. With lots of small files, speed will be about 3-15MB/s, all other things equal.

Just wondering why you would suggest a GB switch?

 

[PrivateJoker]

Just wondering why you would suggest a GB switch?

Technically speaking, and in practice, a pure gigabit switch allows the fastest throughoutput between any two devices connected to it. You can check their spec sheets on newegg, they are rated at total instantaneous switch throughput.

SNB also gives similar stats for routers switching capacity in their tests. But, especially when testing/troubleshooting, going right to a plain unmanaged switch eliminates a lot of variables that a router can introduce.

 

[whsbuss]

Technically speaking, and in practice, a pure gigabit switch allows the fastest throughoutput between any two devices connected to it. You can check their spec sheets on newegg, they are rated at total instantaneous switch throughput.

SNB also gives similar stats for routers switching capacity in their tests. But, especially when testing/troubleshooting, going right to a plain unmanaged switch eliminates a lot of variables that a router can introduce.

Makes sense. But unless the router is overloaded w/traffic the switch doesn't add much in the way of speed. I have an R6300 router from Netgear and I don't see any difference when a GB switch is placed on the LAN.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Both Windows pc and NAS are hooked up to my ASUS AC66U router via cat5e cables
Been moving movies and files all day (drag/drop into file station) and averaging 5-12MB/s

Is this normal speed?

My MB, ASUS p8z68-v/gen3 has gigabyte nic card, its set to that/full duplex in windows 8. Jumbo Frames is off on it, router, and the NAS. Seems the speeds are not very fast at all. I doubt my Bitdefender Security suite (AV/Firewall) is contributing to this slow speed. Suggestions?

Ok, you've got a Synology 213. I have a 212+. I will measure this weekend using both SMB & CFIS file sharing over gigabit connection direct to my RT-N66 and also straight through my D-link Gigabit switch, and straight connection from PC to NAS as well.

But as earlier poster suggested, the PC can be the bottleneck depending on how/what you're txfring. Like time machine backups on my Mac are usually much slower than plain file txfr, because of the CPU overhead in doing a shadow backup on the fly.

It's also interesting to test using the file manager directly within the NAS's admin page to move/copy a very large multi-GB file from one volume to another (or worst case one user folder to another) and time it, vs doing that same operation from a PC logged into the NAS using the pc's OS to move/copy the file on the NAS.

What are the CPU utilization records like on your NAS? Have you stopped or uninstalled any unnesecary packages? Are you running a package that's scouring things for metadata or stuff like that? Our little Synologys aren't great multitaskers.

*Update 1: FWIW here's from my MacBookPro (wifi connection RSSI, speed, and details shown) txfring a file from my NAS (wired to my RT-N66U) to my MBP over SMB, file size was a few megs short of one GB, speed 20MB/s+ all day (speed shown from perspective of NAS & NT-66's 5ghz traffic monitor window).

I use the OSX built in firewall and no 3rd party antivirus on the Macs.

I will try to do more tests from other devices and post. . .

*Update 2: Hitting 60MB/s+ via gigabit Ethernet through a switch then into my RT-N66 and into my 212+ via CIFS file sharing.

FWIW I use Windows 8 built in "windows defender" for firewall & antivirus on that machine.

And really slow through same machine's fast Ethernet (100) port, like 10MB/s-ish, everything else identical.

*Update 3: I think I figured it out, I re-read your post and saw you mentioned that you are drag & dropping using the DSM's built in file manager. When you do that you're running a java app locally within your browser to access your local files, then txfring them through the java applet over http, that's a recipe for slow as crap! Oh and the CPU bearing the brunt of the work for that operation is the one in the NAS.

Using same computer, same gigabit connection it took my 60MB/s+ large file txfr speed down to 10-15ish (occasional peaks at 22), but best case scenario 1/3 the speed possible.

So turn on file sharing on the NAS for the services you want, and map & mount a drive letter on the local machines.

HTH!