Help with slow FTP write speed to RT-N66U usb drive

[Strife21]

I just got my RT-N66U setup for FTP and Samba. Everything seems to work okay but for some reason my FTP upload speed is not where I think its supposed to be when I connecting to the usb drive on the router locally.

I am currently connected with a 1Gbps ethernet cable directly to the router.

When I connect with my FTP client, I download files on the LAN at about 13-15 MB/s. When uploading locally I am only getting 2 MB/s. I tried to copy a file via SAMBA to the same drive and it was at about 6-7 MB/s, I would expect to be getting at least around the same speeds via the FTP upload.

Does anyone have any ideas why this would be happening or how to fix it.

 

[RMerlin]

Write speed is typically slower, especially if using a slower thumb drive. It's more resource intensive on the router, which isn't really built to handle intensive disk I/O.

 

[Strife21]

Yea I figured it would be slower, but why is it getting 6-7 MB/s on Samba when I write and only 2 MB/s on ftp uploads. It doesn't make sense. If its doing it on Samba I dont see why it wouldnt reach those speeds on ftp as well.

From what I read people seem to get at least 4 MB/s writes to ftp. I am using a 400GB USB 2.0 hard drive.

Do you think updating the the firmware to one of your builds could help at all?

I am not home and not sure what my current build is but when I checked via the routers page it said I had the most up to date but from what I read it sounds like that doesn't work to well and I should download the latest version.

I am hoping this will somehow help. Any thoughts?

 

[RMerlin]

Yea I figured it would be slower, but why is it getting 6-7 MB/s on Samba when I write and only 2 MB/s on ftp uploads. It doesn't make sense. If its doing it on Samba I dont see why it wouldnt reach those speeds on ftp as well.

From what I read people seem to get at least 4 MB/s writes to ftp. I am using a 400GB USB 2.0 hard drive.

Do you think updating the the firmware to one of your builds could help at all?

I am not home and not sure what my current build is but when I checked via the routers page it said I had the most up to date but from what I read it sounds like that doesn't work to well and I should download the latest version.

I am hoping this will somehow help. Any thoughts?

Could be the CPU load is higher with FTP than with SMB. I've never actually benchmarked FTP performance, so I don't have any factual data to compare, sorry.

You could monitor the CPU usage of your router while uploading to confirm if it's a CPU issue. Enable the telnet server, connect over telnet, and use the "top" command to monitor CPU usage while uploading.

The filesystem used can also have an impact. ext3 should in theory provide better performance than ntfs on this router model.

 

[Strife21]

Could be the CPU load is higher with FTP than with SMB. I've never actually benchmarked FTP performance, so I don't have any factual data to compare, sorry.

You could monitor the CPU usage of your router while uploading to confirm if it's a CPU issue. Enable the telnet server, connect over telnet, and use the "top" command to monitor CPU usage while uploading.

The filesystem used can also have an impact. ext3 should in theory provide better performance than ntfs on this router model.

It is formatted as ext3. I did that in ubuntu.

Can you give me exact instructions how to use the telnet. I know I enable it in the routers settings but what do I do after that? Sorry new to this.

 

[Strife21]

Could be the CPU load is higher with FTP than with SMB. I've never actually benchmarked FTP performance, so I don't have any factual data to compare, sorry.

You could monitor the CPU usage of your router while uploading to confirm if it's a CPU issue. Enable the telnet server, connect over telnet, and use the "top" command to monitor CPU usage while uploading.

The filesystem used can also have an impact. ext3 should in theory provide better performance than ntfs on this router model.

Okay I did what you said and took some pictures of cpu and processes. It looks like I am using all my cpu uploading to the ftp. Is there anything I can do about it? Does anything look wrong that can be corrected from this info?

https://flic.kr/p/pMBf8j
https://flic.kr/p/qGjwRC

Lastly here is the cpu usage when downloading, it appears the hard drive is using way less 15% or so less cpu power for this.
https://flic.kr/p/qJBz8z

 

[WillHolt]

How safe is it to do that remotely? FYI, the UI says the firmware IS the latest.

VPN came back up finally-- not sure what the delay was.
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[RMerlin]

Okay I did what you said and took some pictures of cpu and processes. It looks like I am using all my cpu uploading to the ftp. Is there anything I can do about it? Does anything look wrong that can be corrected from this info?

https://flic.kr/p/pMBf8j
https://flic.kr/p/qGjwRC

Lastly here is the cpu usage when downloading, it appears the hard drive is using way less 15% or so less cpu power for this.
https://flic.kr/p/qJBz8z

You are indeed capping out your available CPU time with the transfer. Not much that can be done short of switching to a model with a faster CPU, or (ideally) switching to a real NAS.

 

[Strife21]

Yea so I updated to the Merlin firmware the latest one before I ran all that didnt help. Sounds like its the cpu being taxed, not much I can do. Maybe its the drive that is causing it to be taxed so much too, its an old USB 2.0 5400rpm 400gb WD external drive.

thanks for all the help, the plus side is I learned stuff.

 

[huotg01]

For my information and my learning, what are the specifics that make you use FTP instead of Samba ?

 

[Strife21]

For my information and my learning, what are the specifics that make you use FTP instead of Samba ?

Having a place for my friends to upload go pro videos, or download videos I have edited during snowboarding for downhill mountain biking. Or to share other files with them.

Also to have my entire music/video collection available to me when I go business trips. If I decide I want to listen to something on my work comp I just ftp into my router and get my music.

From my understanding Samba only helps me when I am on my home network.

Now I suppose I shouldn't even worry about the FTP write speed because anytime I am ftping in from outside my home network there is no way I am going to be sending at a higher speed then the write speed to the drive anyway.

I was just trying to learn why SAMBA had a better write speed then ftp when they are both on the local network as it didn't really make sense to me.

 

[Strife21]

Well the issue is resolved. This makes no sense too me and hopefully someone can explain but by enabling QoS in merlins firmware my local ftp write speeds sky rocketed from 2 MB/s to 14 MB/s.

I would have thought disabling QoS would give me the higher write speeds but its not the case.

 

[follower]

My case is funny too. I've tested with AC66U, AC68U.
Latest ASUS official firmware.
FTP:ASUS FTP(plain text login, no samba)
Connection tool: Filezilla
HDD: external USB

Outside to FTP(DDNS): up/down Maximum speed
LAN to FTP(DDNS, LAN) : up/down only 1/3 of the maximum speed
There is no up/down speed problem when I connect from outside. But there is a problem when I connect from LAN. I don't understand what's wrong with this situation.

 

[Strife21]

My case is funny too. I've tested with AC66U, AC68U.
Latest ASUS official firmware.
FTP:ASUS FTP(plain text login, no samba)
Connection tool: Filezilla
HDD: external USB

Outside to FTP(DDNS): up/down Maximum speed
LAN to FTP(DDNS, LAN) : up/down only 1/3 of the maximum speed
There is no up/down speed problem when I connect from outside. But there is a problem when I connect from LAN. I don't understand what's wrong with this situation.

My guess is when you are connecting from the outside you are hitting your max bandwidth of the internet connection you have. The max transfer speed determined by your internet bandwidth is probably way less then what your local transfer speeds are. Thus you never notice when you are outside the LAN.

Trying enabling QoS like I did and see if it helps.