DLink 323 NAS access very slow from one PC, others fine

[mothbhai]

I have 3 XP PCs on a Gigabit router switch, with a Dlink 323 NAS too. From one of those PCs, I am facing very slow access to the NAS drive - with directory reads taking as much as 2-3 minutes. From all other PCs, the NAS drive access is snappy - under 2 seconds for directory read. Strangely, even from the problem PC, accessing other network drives (on the other 2 PCs) is fast as normal - only access to the Dlink NAS drive is a problem. I tried pinging from the problem PC to the NAS box and I get under 1ms response times consistently. What could be the problem here?

 

[thiggins]

Are you trying to use jumbo frames on the slow machine?

 

[mothbhai]

Thanks Tim. Jumbo frames are not enabled on this PC or any other devices.

This problem PC is actually my HTPC, running Sage TV. If I shut down the Sage Service and also a Miro client, the directory reads become faster, but still in the 30 second range.

If some data access from this PC was causing the slowdown, all other PCs should also face slow access... I dont understand why only this one PC has the issues with this one share.

 

[thiggins]

Could be a NIC driver issue. Check for an update.

Also, what's the CPU load on the HTPC?

Finally, see if there is high swap activity or other disk activity going on.

 

[mothbhai]

The NIC driver is current, and there is no significant sawp activity on the HTPC at the time I tested.

The HTPC is able to access shares on other PCs very fast - for example directory reads from my wife's PC are in the 2-3 second range as expected. Its only when I access the NAS do they take a minute or more.

I tested the NAS access from other PCs, and the directory reads are in the 5-10 second range - not as fast as reading a directory on a PC share across the network, but much faster than when I read the same NAS from the HTPC.

 

[00Roush]

A few questions...

Are you accessing your shares via computer name or IP address?

Are you running firewall software on any of the clients?

Are you trying to access the NAS via a mapped drive or browsing through My Network Places?

00Roush

 

[mothbhai]

Problem solved - physical connection issue

Roush, Tim - thanks for asking the questions which helped me solve this problem. It was a hardware issue afterall - I started suspecting thats its more than just NAS access when I realized that I could not maintain a stable logmein connection to my HTPC from within the network. I tested the node with Dude and found plenty of lost packets, so decided to start with the physical connections.

I reconnected all the ethernet connections on the switch on which the HTPC is connected, and even changed the port - and that fixed it.

Somehow, the physical connection was just enough bad to mess with the NAS access and logmein, but not so bad that other shares and general web access/ downloads on the PC were not noticeably bad.

Roush - just for the record, I am not running any firewall on this HTPC or NAS, and accessing the shares via computer name and mapped drives (for different purposes).

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for reporting back. Glad you got it sorted.