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Homebrew NAS running XP Pro. Blazing Fast windows to windows, slow sharing with Mac

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dsc106

Occasional Visitor
So I've been messing around with my Homebrew NAS setup for a little bit now. I started on Ubuntu + Webmin, which was working well for everything. I switched some stuff around and had to reformat, and decided to give WinXP pro a shot since I had a spare copy laying around, and to be honest, Linux makes me head hurt :)

Overall, the XP experience has been better and easier for my needs. In fact, my transfer speeds are even faster now in Windows to Windows transfers! From XP Pro SP3 to Vista SP1 I managed to get 60+ mb/s on a large file transfer!

HOWEVER...

Sharing with my Mac systems got noticeably slower. It works, but bringing up the directory takes a few seconds, and everytime I click a folder, it takes a few seconds to load the content. Streaming video files used to work fine, now it pauses for a brief second once every ~10 seconds. Under Ubuntu+webmin, my Mac file sharing experience was much better.

Previously, I had been using Samba file sharing through Ubuntu/Webmin with NTFS formatted disks. Now I am using Windows File Sharing using NTFS formatted disks through XP, and the Macs don't seem to like this as much :/

Any ideas or suggestions that don't involve switching back to Ubuntu?
 
The answer to your problem is AFP. Your Mac clients should not be using SMB/CIFS (if you can help it). You need to install netatalk packages on Ubuntu, but NOT using apt-get because there is a problem with the current package. Google it.

So, go ahead and google "ubuntu netatalk" so your Mac's can enjoy AFP shares and your Winblows can enjoy it's crappy SMB ;)

p.s. Don't forget to install avahi with it so you can enjoy Bonjour services
 
OK - I've narrowed it down a little. The problem is only on AIRPORT connections. It's wirelessG, which I know is limited to 54mbps...

However, these same airport connections used to work faster - IE I could stream videos and load directory structures faster. Now there is stuttering.

When I plug the Macs into a gigabit connection via cable, they work great (in fact, a little faster than before).

What could have caused the slowdown in AIRPORT connections?

OH - just got an idea. The server is now set to utilize Jumbo Frames (9000k) and that is how it deals out traffic on the NIC. previously on Ubuntu, I had it set to 1500 because I was too dumb to figure out how to change it (haha). This is probably why I get faster speeds now on Gigabit connections, but also slower speeds on Airport connections (since 54mbps would be hurt by a jumbo frame server, wouldn't it?)
 
The answer to your problem is AFP. Your Mac clients should not be using SMB/CIFS (if you can help it). You need to install netatalk packages on Ubuntu, but NOT using apt-get because there is a problem with the current package. Google it.

So, go ahead and google "ubuntu netatalk" so your Mac's can enjoy AFP shares and your Winblows can enjoy it's crappy SMB ;)

p.s. Don't forget to install avahi with it so you can enjoy Bonjour services

I am not running Ubuntu as server anymore, and when Macs were using SMB they worked fine (though not quite as well as the Windows machine). Perhaps this was due to AFP?

I am running WinXP Pro as the NAS server now. I think I *might* have figured out the problem (described in last post), but perhaps getting AFP will speed things up in wired connections as well?

How can I install AFP protocol in WinXP for my Macs?
 
Basically the answer is yes jumbo frames can cause problems as they are not part of the official IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard.

If you do decide to use Ubuntu again I would recommend you use ext3 instead of NTFS for your disks. NTFS is not a native linux (Ubuntu) format so in my opinion data loss would be more likely to happen using this disk format with linux. Performance is most likely lower as well when using NTFS instead of a native linux disk format. Full read/write NTFS support in linux is fairly new from my understanding so in general many recommend staying away from using it.

Try using standard frame sizes and see how things work out. Also see if you notice a drop in speed of your wired connections.

Windows can do AFP but for Win XP Pro you would probably need a program like http://www.cyansoftware.com/download_MacServerIP.htm. But since Mac OSX has a samba client built in it would be much easier to just use that. It might not have the best performance possible but it is free and should work for streaming just fine. If higher performance is needed you could just use FTP for file transfers.

Let us know how it goes.

00Roush
 
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dsc106, i'm glad to hear you got a lot better performance out of your hardware. Any idea why it was so low originally? have you thought about setting up your serer with VNC so you can run it headless?

Z

p.s. I'm a little jealous of your transfer speeds :)
 
00Roush - thanks for the info. Question about NTFS though. I see what you are saying about it being new, so data loss or corruption being more likely.... HOWEVER, does that change at all since I'm not working with NTFS in the Linux OS, and *only* over the network?

Zedpol - I think it was only low because I had jumbo frames set to 9000 on the server, and the wireless G devices didn't like that so much. With an MTU of 1500, the wireless devices work great again. However, it slows transfer speeds to 45-55mb/s on the wired gigabit connections. With ALL devices (server included) set to MTU of 9000 (max Jumbo Frame setting), then I can achieve 60-69mb/s read speeds. Write speeds seem to be about half of that, but I haven't tested write speeds very much.

I don't know why I'm getting better transfer speeds than you if you have done those things. My client system that I have tested on is Vista SP1. The server is an Athlon 3200+ socket 939 90nm AMD system with 1gb of RAM, dual booting WinXP Pro and Ubuntu desktop 8.10. All the HDDs are brand new Seagate 1.5tb HDDs.


What is VNC, and what do you mean by "run it headless"?

Thanks again all!
 
Well even though you are just using the NTFS drive over the network you are not directly accessing the drive. The Linux OS is still doing the reading and writing to the disk. Using iSCSI would allow direct access to the drive over the network but I believe the drive would only be able to be accessed by one computer at a time.

Glad to hear your wireless speeds are better.

Interesting that your speed goes down with no jumbo frames. Would you be able to check and see what your CPU usage is on the server and client with and without jumbo frames? From my understanding using jumbo frames reduces CPU usage and in turn allows for higher network throughput. Maybe this is the case for you.

Could you tell me what network cards you are using on the server and client? Basically just need to know if they are PCIe based or PCI based. Also how fast is the hard drive on the client? I am wondering because the client has to be able to keep up with the server to see peak performance. In the end the slowest computer will determine overall transfer speeds.

00Roush
 

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