Home Cat 5e Network and slow transfers?

[WildViper]

Hi All,

I just completed wiring my home with Cat 5e and was hoping to transfer files to my NAS at a faster pace (gigabit). But no such luck. Not sure what is wrong and hopefully you guys can help.

I tried to transfer of a folder with video files for a total of 1.5gig. File sizes are from 200MB to 700MB or so. I am getting 5-7/MB per second! I thought I should be getting at least upwards of 20MB/Sec.

Here is the setup:

Charter Modem > TP-Link wireless > Trendnet TEG-S80g > Wall Jacks in house. One Wall Jack > Trendnet TEG-S8g > Dlink DNS-321

• Cat 5e (568B) whole house. I have tested the cables via the cable tester and they are fine.
• Internet comes via Charter's own Cisco modem attached via Coax and I have that plugged into to my TP-Link wireless router (capable of gigabit). From the wireless router, I have connected a Cat 5e to the Trendnet Switch.
  
• Via the Trendnet switch I have connected the whole house RJ45s. Then used another Trendnet switch from one RJ45 wall jack for NAS (has 2 1TB 7,200 RPM drives) and other equipment (Vonage)
  
• Running Win 7 64bit off SSD drive. Data is on a 7,200 SATA drives.
  

My desktop computer is connected directly to one of the Wall jacks and I am getting the switch lights telling me it is 1,000 gigabit connections. Same for Dlink NAS..light shows full gigabit.

Here is the hardware I have with links for specs:

• Trendnet switches - 1st / 2nd One
  
• Dlink NAS DNS-321
  
• TP-Link Wireless ROuter
  
• Mobo: Gigabyte
  
• AMD Phenom II X4 960T
  

Help!

 

[Fardringle]

A basic cable tester only tells you if the wires are attached. It doesn't tell if they are attached properly or securely, or if there are any problems with the physical wires. Having said that, 5-7 MB/second is actually 40-56mbps and on the slower side but within normal operation range for a standard 100mbps ethernet connection. You say that the switch port says you have a gigabit connection. What does Windows (on the computer) say about the connection?

 

[ScottMac]

Hi All,

I just completed wiring my home with Cat 5e and was hoping to transfer files to my NAS at a faster pace (gigabit). But no such luck. Not sure what is wrong and hopefully you guys can help.

I tried to transfer of a folder with video files for a total of 1.5gig. File sizes are from 200MB to 700MB or so. I am getting 5-7/MB per second! I thought I should be getting at least upwards of 20MB/Sec.

Here is the setup:

Charter Modem > TP-Link wireless > Trendnet TEG-S80g > Wall Jacks in house. One Wall Jack > Trendnet TEG-S8g > Dlink DNS-321

• Cat 5e (568B) whole house. I have tested the cables via the cable tester and they are fine.
• Internet comes via Charter's own Cisco modem attached via Coax and I have that plugged into to my TP-Link wireless router (capable of gigabit). From the wireless router, I have connected a Cat 5e to the Trendnet Switch.
  
• Via the Trendnet switch I have connected the whole house RJ45s. Then used another Trendnet switch from one RJ45 wall jack for NAS (has 2 1TB 7,200 RPM drives) and other equipment (Vonage)
  
• Running Win 7 64bit off SSD drive. Data is on a 7,200 SATA drives.
  

My desktop computer is connected directly to one of the Wall jacks and I am getting the switch lights telling me it is 1,000 gigabit connections. Same for Dlink NAS..light shows full gigabit.

Here is the hardware I have with links for specs:

• Trendnet switches - 1st / 2nd One
  
• Dlink NAS DNS-321
  
• TP-Link Wireless ROuter
  
• Mobo: Gigabyte
  
• AMD Phenom II X4 960T
  

Help!

IF you screwed up the pair order when you terminated the cables, you likely have lots of crosstalk interference.

Try 100 Half-duplex or 10BASE-T (10 meg, half duplex) and see if it appears to work better ....if so, you have split pair (i.e., it was terminated as {pair}{pair}{pair}{pair} and pair 2 on pins 3&6 are running on two different colors (one wire on each of two pair) .

 

[VulgarDisplay]

If you have a laptop take it to the switch and use a pretty made patch cord to see if your speeds increase. If so I would suspect your jacks aren't wired up to snuff.

 

[ch33zw1z]

some great advice so far. I recommend iperf to test connection speeds. don't just rely on file transfers.

http://openmaniak.com/iperf.php

Keep in mind you're also limited by the device speeds. If the NAS network drop tests good with something like iperf, then maybe the NAS is having issues.

Either way, you got some testing to do.

 

[WildViper]

Thank you.

How do I test with a laptop? Just connect that to the switch where the NAS is connected?

And I am totally lost with this: "100 Half-duplex or 10BASE-T (10 meg, half duplex)" - How do I do that?

Also, here is the network cable tester that I used...I think this tests if I terminated right no? Tester

Edit: I will check what Windows says...

 

[JackMDS]

If the transfer is form and to the NAS, then it might be the typical capability of entry level NAS' that are rated Giga.

Usually it means that the component in the box is Giga capable. That does Not mean that the unit as a whole (CPU Memory etc.) can really achieve live Giga Transfer.

Try first to transfer between two wired PCs that have Giga NICs and are connected to the same Giga capable switch.

A good optimized Giga network can achieve this.

That is the main reason to use a computer as a NAS and Not Entry Level Junk Boxes.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Thank you.

How do I test with a laptop? Just connect that to the switch where the NAS is connected?

And I am totally lost with this: "100 Half-duplex or 10BASE-T (10 meg, half duplex)" - How do I do that?

Also, here is the network cable tester that I used...I think this tests if I terminated right no? Tester

Edit: I will check what Windows says...

This is how I would test the path.

1. Take laptop and patch cable to the main switch, plug it in to the same port to runs the path to the switch/NAS.

see what the link comes up as: windows command prompt>run this command: ipconfig /all

see what the results are

you can also look in network connections, under status tab to see what the link is.

Next, run iperf -s on the desktop (-s switch runs iperf as server), then run iperf -c x.x.x.x (x.x.x.x is ip of desktop) from the laptop. the defaults will return a speed in mbps (megabit per second). What is the result? I usually get about 500-600 mbps results over cat5e. about 400-500 on some cat6 prefabs I have.

After you verify the wall ports are terminated correctly, repeat this process on the wall jack in question where the NAS/switch is located. If this tests good, plug the switch in and do it again.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's the D-Link NAS; I have the same one. It's just slow.

I usually get around 10 MB second, but I suppose it depends what protocol you're using.

 

[imagoon]

First review on Amazon mentioned a max speed about 14meg a second. It may be possible the NAS can't really handle high data rates. Also since the reviews are from 2008, I suspect the unit doesn't have a enough CPU behind it to handle the gig data rates.

 

[WildViper]

Thank you all.

It appears that it is the DLink. I tested the connection with another laptop and a Mac. Sustained speeds of 55MB to 72MB were seen in all transfers.

Get to the Dlink...and it crawls. Time to get a new NAS. Any recs?

 

[SecurityTheatre]

Thank you all.

It appears that it is the DLink. I tested the connection with another laptop and a Mac. Sustained speeds of 55MB to 72MB were seen in all transfers.

Get to the Dlink...and it crawls. Time to get a new NAS. Any recs?

You're sure it's not the cable between them?

If you have tried that, a new NAS might be the solution.

 

[WildViper]

You're sure it's not the cable between them?

If you have tried that, a new NAS might be the solution.

Yeah..I connected the laptop to the same cable that the NAS was connected on and ran the test. The Mac was used to test another wall jack just to make sure.

 

[taq8ojh]

A NAS box that would make use of gigabit is nothing cheap, unfortunately. I have Synology DS213 and it only does maximum of like 40-50MB/s. The thing was not cheap (270eur) considering it's for home use... If only they didn't put crappy CPUs in these boxes.

 

[ch33zw1z]

You're sure it's not the cable between them?

If you have tried that, a new NAS might be the solution.

Got a spare PC? FreeNAS

 

[Eug]

A NAS box that would make use of gigabit is nothing cheap, unfortunately. I have Synology DS213 and it only does maximum of like 40-50MB/s. The thing was not cheap (270eur) considering it's for home use... If only they didn't put crappy CPUs in these boxes.

I have a DS413 (which has the same hardware as the DS213+), and I get over 90 MB/s out of it. However, I'm running each of the drives as individual volumes, not RAID.

This is a low power dual-core PowerPC based NAS.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

A NAS box that would make use of gigabit is nothing cheap, unfortunately. I have Synology DS213 and it only does maximum of like 40-50MB/s. The thing was not cheap (270eur) considering it's for home use... If only they didn't put crappy CPUs in these boxes.

Yeah.

I remember reading reviews that said the DNS-321 and -323 were originally designed with 100Mbps ethernet controllers, and were provisioned accordingly - with little ARM CPUs and almost no RAM. The marketing people made the engineers swap out the ethernet controller for a gigabit one at the last minute so they'd have the bullet point on their features list, but...

Yeah.

I'd really like to take an older C2D mini-PC and throw one of these where the optical drive used to be. But my collection of HDDs is almost all 3.5".

 

[taq8ojh]

I have a DS413 (which has the same hardware as the DS213+), and I get over 90 MB/s out of it. However, I'm running each of the drives as individual volumes, not RAID.

This is a low power dual-core PowerPC based NAS.

Are you sure it has the same hardware?
I currently only have one disk in mine, WD Red 3TB, and I think I never got above 60MB/s out of it (40 was a bit of an understatement). And CPU usage is surely at 100% when I copy large files from/to it.

 

[taq8ojh]

Ah, yes it does, only I missed the plus.
No surprise you get 90MB/s, those two boxes have dual core CPUs. I wish it wasn't soldered to the board...

 

[WildViper]

I do have an old PC, but it is real old...not 386 days...but probably a Pentium. I was about to get rid of it...should I dust that off and make it my FreeNas server?

Not sure if it can handle what I would want it to do...stream movies (VOB, MPEG, MP4, H.264 and so on) to my HDTV and have surround sound pumped out. Basically run a Plex server.

Anyone know a minimum spec for lag free performance?

 

[ch33zw1z]

that pentium isn't going to work.

You'll want a Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivalent, and 4GB of ram. You at least have the wired connections made, that will make streaming much nicer.

 

[glugglug]

Take a close look at the connector.

wire color order should be like this:

Pay special attention to the middle 4, where the orange pair surrounds the blue pair.

 

[taq8ojh]

Wrong suggestion.
Pay attention to all of them And do the same for both ends of a cable

 

[WildViper]

@glugglug

I actually wired for 568B. Should I be switching them to A?

 

[ch33zw1z]

@glugglug

I actually wired for 568B. Should I be switching them to A?

No. either way is fine, just both ends the same way