NAS Gigabit - is this speed typical?

[MIDIman]

I have a crappy ol SMC GS5 gigabit switch. Its uplink is going to my 10/100 router.

Two devices are connected to the switch - my computer (Asus P5K Marvell 88E8056) and a Hammer NAS HN1200. The leds for each device on the SMC (except the uplink) are green, meaning GBe connections, and I'm using cat 6 cables.

Last night, I had the NAS and the computer only on the 10/100 router. Transferring 80GB of large 1-4GB files took "hours."

Right now, with the NAS and computer on gigabit, I'm transferring 110GB of small ~5-10mb files (mp3s) and its also taking hours - only fractionally smaller amount of time estimated by WinXP.

Something more concrete (on gigabit):
- 165MB mp3s takes ~18s
- 100MB mp3s takes ~15s
- 5.43GB ISO takes ~11 minutes

Are these speeds typical? Anything I can do to test or try to get faster speeds?

 

[MIDIman]

Came across a few things - looks like I'm on the mark with this NAS. Was hoping for a little bit more, but ah well. It was all cheap!

HN1200 Review (my speeds were very similar to this review, if not a tiny bit faster)
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30056/75/

Chart of NAS performance
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_nas/Itemid,190


And wow - check out the crappy IOCELL NAS. Sort of wishing I bought it instead as it has pretty much twice the GBe performance as the Hammer and includes eSata:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/...cell-351une-netdisk-reviewed?showall=&start=2

 

[RebateMonger]

So you are getting 10 MegaByte/sec transfers. Historically, consumer-level NAS units weren't known for their high speeds, often giving transfer rates from 1 MB/sec to 10 MB/sec. It didn't matter whether they were "Gigabit" or not.

I imagine they've improved a bit by now. Here's a test of around fifty different NAS units with gigabit connections. Speeds seem to be between 8 MB/sec and 70 MB/sec:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_nas/Itemid,190/chart,13/

 

[Pheran]

Seems like your NAS is kind of slow - I did a small switch review when I upgraded to gigabit and this was the benchmark result:

To see what kind of improvement I got, I performed a file copy benchmark from and to the server both before and after I swapped in the new switch. The file was a 2.87 GB hard disk image from Virtual PC. Here are the results:

Copy from server to PC, Linksys 100M switch: 6:08 (62 Mbps)
Copy from PC to server, Linksys 100M switch: 5:00 (77 Mbps)
Copy from server to PC, D-Link 1000M switch: 1:16 (302 Mbps)
Copy from PC to server, D-Link 1000M switch: 1:23 (277 Mbps)

 

[JackMDS]

There is some improvement with the sub $1000 stand alone NAS', but is still Not at the level of a simple computer with Giga NIC and optimized TCP/IP.

The "funny" thing about it. With the current price structure, a computer solution is not more expensive, and if One uses Green computer, it is not much more power eater either.

I.e., in most cases using a stand alone NAS is more a matter of user Psychology rather than objective Technology.

 

[MIDIman]

Well the key is cost and size. This NAS - and the other I link to with closer to 40mb/s - are less than $90 + hard drives and have a really small footprint.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I benchmarked my "Gigabit" NAS, and even though it does have a gigabit link to my switch (along with my other two PCs), it still can't push more than about 90Mbit/sec worth of data out of it.

 

[MIDIman]

Question - what sort of throughput can I expect from transferring over Wireless N to a gigabit NAS on a gigabit wireless N router? i.e. like say, D-Link's gigabit wireless router, with the IOCELL NAS which does around 36mb/s, and a wireless N computer transferring data to the NAS. Can I expect wireless N to achieve 30mb/s or higher?


VirtualLarry - which NAS do you have? Looking at this chart, I haven't seen any getting 90m/s
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_nas/Itemid,190/chart,13/

 

[Madwand1]

Can I expect wireless N to achieve 30mb/s or higher?

VirtualLarry - which NAS do you have? Looking at this chart, I haven't seen any getting 90m/s

Be careful about the units. B = byte = 8 bits = 8 b.

So 10 MB/s = 80 Mb/s.

90 Mb/s or so is commonly reached by 100 Mb/s wired devices. Such speeds are far less likely with wireless. Wireless N can hit and exceed that under ideal conditions, but around 50 Mb/s maximum throughput is much more common and 30 Mb/s can be "normal".

Gigabit wired is theoretically much faster, but you're limited by a dated consumer NAS which doesn't come close to fully utilizing gigabit. According to SNB's 2007 review, the Hammer NAS performs at the speeds you report -- at most around 10 MB/s.

 

[drebo]

Question - what sort of throughput can I expect from transferring over Wireless N to a gigabit NAS on a gigabit wireless N router? i.e. like say, D-Link's gigabit wireless router, with the IOCELL NAS which does around 36mb/s, and a wireless N computer transferring data to the NAS. Can I expect wireless N to achieve 30mb/s or higher?


VirtualLarry - which NAS do you have? Looking at this chart, I haven't seen any getting 90m/s
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/component/option,com_nas/Itemid,190/chart,13/

Same thing as you're getting with the wired connection (or less depending on your environment). Your bottleneck is deffinitely the NAS's read/write speed, not your network.

This is why I never recommend these things.

 

[JackMDS]

One of the Marketing tricks that is prevalent in Network Hardware is the use of the rating of the core hardware and not the functional capacity.

Many of the NAS' are rated Giga in their data sheet because the core inner Network card's chipset is rated Giga.

The vendors do not disclose is the Functional outcome of the bandwidth which is a combination of the chipset, firmware, and other component that are used. In almost all cases of Entry Level NAS' the functional outcome is much bellow the rate of the NIC Chipset by itself.

Any old P-III 1GHz computer and above, with Giga card (win2k/XP or WHS) set as a file server would do better.

 

[Genx87]

Jack is right about windows servers or workstations being better. I have been getting 30MB\sec on my Windows 2003\08 boxes at home for awhile. With Windows 08's software raid 5 I can write about 25-35MB\sec and read at 65-75MB\sec over my Gbps network. Which is an improvement over 2003.

 

[zerogear]

even with my WHS (2003-based) I read/write consistantly between 25-35MB/s -- At this point having a fileserver is a much better option than NAS

 

[JackMDS]

There are ways to get even better Speed form the computer NAS'

Make sure that you have a good Giga Switch. Some of the entry level Giga switch (and the ones that are in the Giga Routers) Sux just like the NAS' boxes.

The best inexpensive Giga switch is this, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833156250

Optimize the Computer's TCP/IP using the setting for your Internet connection type and double the recommended TCP RCwin.

http://www.ezlan.net/network/TCPoptimize.jpg

In most cases that will improve the Giga LAN transfer.