Question I must be stupid or missing something for I cant get it right I guess :( Plz I need help :)

[funboy6942]

I been dealing with this for years. My transfer speeds to my Drobo FS seem slow to me. It is on the older side, but it does have a Gigabit Ethernet jack. My pc, which is a Gigabyte X470 mobo has gigabit Ethernet. I just bought this switch off Amazon, for I was using a really old rack mount I bought off ebay years ago, and got this one here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0044GJ516/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

.

Im running cat 6 from my pc to my switch, and cat 6 from the drobo to the switch now, and the problem Im having is I cannot get transfer speeds to go over 30mbs when moving files from my pc, doesnt matter what they are. I have but one cable coming from my fiber optic router, to the switch, then everything else in my house but our phones are hard wired. There is NOTHING else using the network right now other then my PC and My Drobo as Im moving a DVD file of my daughters movie I copied and changed to H264 so she can watch it on her pc my son and I built for her and not ruin yet another disc. I been slowly taking her movies and ones that are not completely damaged taking them and moving them into her own file in my Drobo box.

But what the heck am I doing wrong? My son can transfer files from his Gigabyte B450 mobo with the same nic card and get 60-100mbps, but for as long as I can remember, years and years, Ive noticed I cannot break 30mbps when moving just one file at a time. I thought I had it nipped in the butt with buying a new switch, and it having 32 Gbps forwarding, but Im still sucking, or is this normal, and Im not going to get more, for it just drives me nuts that my son can take files, and move files back at much faster speeds then me and has for years hooked up with a 100ft cat 5 cable, and Im just using 50" cat 6. And it was doing the same when my pc was hooked up to the switch when I had it in the basement with a 100" cat 5 made by the same people for I had like 10 of these at one time. OH and the lights on the new switch are all green indicating its running at gigabit speeds, but one cable going to my TV, its at 10/100 according to the light.

I also bought this card here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0832MR4WB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

before I bought the new switch and got the same speeds with it, though my pc choked somewhat when trying to play music and move files at the same time.

Any help as to what I may be doing wrong and not getting close to even 50mbs on a gigabit network. And yes I have the latest drivers and firmware for my Drobo installed, and I have all the latest drivers for my wireless and wired cards in my PC and my sons as well. I just hooked up this new switch, was gonna get happy, and now Im pissed for I got no gains at all going from my really old 48 port to this new 16 port with port forwarding that my other one doesnt have at all.

Heck, I think my old 10/100 48 port switch I used to use waaaaaaay back in the day moved files faster :O

Any help to get this chugging would be greatly appreciated!
TIA

 

[JackMDS]

The Real Speed of transfer is a result of multiple variances in the card it self, and across the Network, that affects the performance.

The number that are stated by the vendors is the inner specs of the card's chipset per-se and it is just one variable that affect the actual result.

A crude analogie would be complaining: "Why my Truck with 700 HP is much slower than a Ferrari with less power engine".

 

[extide]

What drobo is it? Any 1gbit nic and any 1gbit switch should easily be able to max out gigabit which is roughly 115MB/sec (+ overhead). I can transfer files over my network at ~115MB a sec all day. I bet the drobo is just shitty or the drives are slow or fragmented and that's where your bottleneck is. It's not the network -- as long as you are wired in and it's all gigabit the problem lies elsewhere.

 

[funboy6942]

It is a Drobo FS unit, and it has 5 4tb drives in it no where near maxed out at all, but running in Drobo's redundancy mode so if 2 drives should take a dump I dont lose anything and can just swap out the bad drives. Its been running for over 5 years now and I havent redone it in this whole time, so I am going to move the files to my pc and reset the drobo and see whats what. But I do need to point out again, my pc has NEVER, even up to this point been able to move things faster then what my son and can do, and we have both had different hardware changes in this entire time, and yet I could never top over 30 mbps, no matter what my hardware, and then when I upgrade he gets my older stuff, and yet he can still get my older hardware and still top out faster then my pc with newer stuff now in it.

I have moved the pc around, changed its hardware, changed drivers, changed wires, changed switches, and still my pc will not do over 30mbps, while his does 60-100 mbps hooked up the same way, with the same nic card, same driver, and a older cat 5 cable to my cat 6, and his is 100 feet, and mine is 50 feet and closer to the router and switch. And this has been the same speed all the time no matter what Im using be it my old AMD 8320, and upgraded during this time, and now Im on a 3600x and Im slow as dirt.

I can understand if the drives are fragmented, but doesnt change the fact my sons pc with my old hardware in it is doing 60-100mbps where Im always stuck at 30 or below no matter what I do. And again the new switch says Im hooked into it at gigabit speeds, and my test internet speed test shows Im getting my full 250mbps Im paying for, and actually tested after hooking up the new switch and it got to 260mbps, so I know I am at least getting that off the interwebs.

And this is with just my computer on using the switch for the consoles and my sons computer are all off, so its me and drobo and thats it on there and still I tried again after restarting my pc, and moved the file again, and still getting between 25-30mbps and no more.

 

[extide]

Hrm, definitely something up with your PC then.

 

[funboy6942]

But I been through several different changes in hardware, my son get my old stuff yet all my old stuff that didnt run fast for me, runs faster for him in his room when transferring files. I chucked off my problem as being old used switch(s), but now with the new one, and brand new cat 6 50 foot cables then the cat 5 100 foot I was using Im still not seeing any difference in speed. So it cannot be my pc considering its been like this for over 5 years going through at least 4 different hardware changes, and now a new cable and switch and still no change. Im just not understanding why his computer with all my older hardware, older slower longer cable, plugged in the same way as mine is is much faster and always has been for it make no darn sense to me as to why

 

[extide]

It's gotta be something that you are doing to your computer but he isn't doing to his. Maybe you are installing some software that is messing with the way windows handles tcp window sizing or something.

I would say try using some tools like iperf to actually test network performance at a lower level. That would eliminate the entire SMB stack and let you see if it's a straight up throughput problem, or an issue with file sharing itself.

 

[funboy6942]

I downloaded that and netperf and for the life of me I dont understand how to install it or get it to work. Im not good with stuff that you dont just double click install and then run when done. With iperf it has the icon and a dll file, and when I click on the program it does nothing at all, and in netperf I click on set up and it asks me what program to use to open that file, so Im at a loss with what you said to try as well

 

[boomerang]

iperf runs from the command line. There are a slew of tutorials out there. The first that came up for me on YouTube is below.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I downloaded that and netperf and for the life of me I dont understand how to install it or get it to work. Im not good with stuff that you dont just double click install and then run when done. With iperf it has the icon and a dll file, and when I click on the program it does nothing at all, and in netperf I click on set up and it asks me what program to use to open that file, so Im at a loss with what you said to try as well

You need two workstations.

On the first, open a cli prompt to the iperf directory. Run "iperf -s"

On the second, open cli to iperf directory, run "iperf -c xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx"

The exact executable may be different, like iperf3.exe

Instead of xxx's, put in the IP of the server workstation (the one you ran the -s option on)

Watch for firewall prompts and allow iperf thru.

 

[funboy6942]

Thanks guys for the info, greatly appreciated. As a small update I decided to to move my files off my Drobo, and when done going to reset it since its been chugging now for well over 5 years without a refresh to it. But before doing that I got into my new router for I just switched over to fiber since it was offered to me, to find out it wasnt set up to run 5g only 2.4, so I did that and hooked my new wifi card to it with 5g enabled, and transferring the files from drobo to my pc tirelessly is hitting now a max of 50mbps every now and then, being between 30 and 50, but the max I see is 50.

So once this is all done, and I reset my drobo and format all the drives in it, a long format and not quick which Im sure will take days since it has 5 4tb western digital reds in it, wont be quick Im sure, but after that I will move it all back to it seeing if my speeds increase, and if not will do as mentioned to test my network. Id do it now, but I just dont want to have it mess up my transfers I got going on in anyway since its taking 24+ hours to move 3 tb of storage at this speed

 

[Ranulf]

Sounds like something is causing signal interference since the problem persists across multiple systems and hardware/cables.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Funboy, I'm going through something similar.

I have a (probably more vastly complex) setup than yours, I have client workstations with both 2.5GbE NICs, and 1GbE NICs, wired to multi-gig and 1Gbit switches respectively, all trunked back to my network cluster over a 10GbE link, and from there, to a multi-1Gbit switch. as well as an 8-port 2.5GbE switch, both linked at 10GbE.

I have some NAS units, and the one that has been giving me trouble, is my QNAP TS-451. I've added the (official QNAP) USB3.0 5GbE NIC (Aquantia chipset), and I've tried three different USB3.0 Type-A to Type-C cables (NIC is Type-C socket, NAS is Type-A socket).

I have been unable to write to the NAS, with 4x 8TB WD Red 5400/5900 RPM HDDs in RAID-5, faster than 45-80MB/sec. I seem to recall being able to write to a 4-drive RAID-5 array (when I had my Seagate DM 5TB shucked drives in there), @ line-speed, which was 115MB/sec or so over the Gigabit ethernet ports that are built-in.

In fact, I moved some files over to my other Asustor NAS (which does run 250-270MB/sec over their Asustor 2.5GbE / RealTek USB3.0 adapter), and re-formatted / re-initialized the volume on my TS-451.

I'm still re-building the RAID-5, which will take 2 days or so, but preliminary testing of copying test files (ISOs) to the NAS's Public directory, WITHOUT any encryption, using SMB2.0/3.0, yielded only 45-80MB/sec. Over a 5GbE NIC running at 2.5GbE due to switch. (NAS confirms link speed @ 2.5GbE).

I should be hitting 145-160MB/sec. write speeds, I feel.

I'll give it another shot after it has finished initializing the RAID-5.

One thing is that cumulative firmware updates, seem to have gotten more bloated, as well as offering more features (Thick/Thin volumes, in additional to "Static" Volumes, encryption for volume, directory, SMB signing, etc), which all seem to add up on CPU time for the poor CPU. It's an Intel Celeron Atom something CPU, which is an older one compared to the one in my Asustor NAS, but that is a Gemini Lake Atom dual-core, and it fares alright with 4x 10TB WD Red drives and a 2.5GbE adapter.