Why is my home network so slow at moving files around?

[cebalrai]

Long-time PC techie but I'm fairly new to networking.

I picked up a WD MyBook Live 1 TB to use as a media streamer and home backup device. But when I started copying my files to it (approximately 250 GB of data), it copied at an underwhelming 800 kps to 1.4 mbps. Playback of HD movies was sometimes okay, sometimes unwatchable.

So I pointed the finger at my 5 year-old cheapie Belkin wireless router and went out to pick up a Netgear N600. Now I copy files at about 3.4 mpbs. While this is certainly better, it's not nearly what I'd hoped.

Here's some other info about my network:
- Fiber-optic connection @ 30 mbps download, 12 mbps upload
- High signal strength
- Windows 7 computers, one Linux Mint 12, all have the same speed
- The primary computer I'm trying this on has a fast Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive



My question is, is this speed normal or does it sound like something is wrong?

 

[yinan]

The drive is the bottleneck. They do not put fast enough CPUs in those things to keep up with all the activity going on. Buy/build a real home server.

 

[cebalrai]

The drive is the bottleneck. They do not put fast enough CPUs in those things to keep up with all the activity going on. Buy/build a real home server.

The drive has a CPU?

 

[theevilsharpie]

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, you're probably running into wireless interference issues. Try connecting via a wired connection and see if performance improves.

 

[cebalrai]

Unless you live in the middle of nowhere, you're probably running into wireless interference issues. Try connecting via a wired connection and see if performance improves.

My connection is very fast. Speedtest shows 30 mbps like I said. There's only one other wireless signak around and it's faint.

 

[llee]

It sounds like the drive is the bottleneck. Also, how big are the files that you're copying over?

 

[Ghiedo27]

Are you backing up the data from a wireless client? It sounds like you're transferring at solid .11g speeds. Do your wireless clients have .11N capabilities?

It sounds like the drive is the bottleneck.

Really? Even my old 80GB drives transfer at double to triple those rates.

 

[spidey07]

Use wired. Wireless is slow.

 

[JackMDS]

As a frame of reference.

My Giga Wire transfer (Wire computer to wire computer) can pick at 80MB/sec (B=Byte).

My Wireless (Simultaneous AGN) provides 15MB/sec. (B=Byte) between a Wireless computer to a Wired computer.

There is a "Toy" (similar to your) on the network its works only at 5 MB/sec. wire to wire.

I.e., the "Toy" can Not even reach the speed of an old 100Mb/sec. Network.

 

[jumpncrash]

Are you backing up the data from a wireless client? It sounds like you're transferring at solid .11g speeds. Do your wireless clients have .11N capabilities?

Really? Even my old 80GB drives transfer at double to triple those rates.

He's talking about a network drive, not an internal IDE HD

And to the OP, start by transferring with cables, wireless is completely useless when it comes to transferring anything of real size.

 

[Ghiedo27]

If you do set up a wired connection you may see something like this (article):

When it comes to performance, the WD My Book Live is no slouch in terms of read or write speed. The unit makes use of most of the gigabit LAN connection, serving up files with an average read speed of 61.2MB/s and a write speed of 45.5MB/s in our network.

Really doesn't seem to be that slow for entry NAS, imo.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, reads of 60MB/sec, and writes of 45MB/sec? That's pretty darn good.

My generic IDE drive "Gigabit NAS" (it's real name), aka NS-349, reads at 13-14MB/sec, and writes at around 11MB/sec, on a gigabit link, with a fast source drive on the local machine.

My laptop, over wireless N (connect speed, 65Mbit/sec), does like 3.5MB/sec to the NAS.

 

[cebalrai]

Are you backing up the data from a wireless client? It sounds like you're transferring at solid .11g speeds. Do your wireless clients have .11N capabilities?

Yes, they are all modern computers with wireless .11N. One has the ability to use the 5ghz band as well but it doesn't help.

No I am not currently backing up data or doing anything else that would use bandwidth.

Use wired. Wireless is slow.

Comments like this aren't helpful. There's no way my rates should be this slow simply because wireless technology somehow can't transfer more than 3.4 mbps.

He's talking about a network drive, not an internal IDE HD

And to the OP, start by transferring with cables, wireless is completely useless when it comes to transferring anything of real size.

Ok just tried comparing wired and wireless for a 4 GB movie transfer. I get the same 3.4 to 4.0 mbps transfer rate either way.

Wow, reads of 60MB/sec, and writes of 45MB/sec? That's pretty darn good.

Yeah so I should be getting something far better than what I am...

Thanks for the assistance so far

 

[Ghiedo27]

Ok just tried comparing wired and wireless for a 4 GB movie transfer. I get the same 3.4 to 4.0 mbps transfer rate either way.

That's with no wireless device at all involved, right? The NAS is plugged into the router and the computer with the 4GB movie is also plugged in? Have you checked to make sure everything negotiated to the right speed? Using the web interface my netgear router has it under the "Router Status" tab at the bottom in "show statistics." Can you see you check your connection with the software that came with it?

Either way, I would try a another cable and port on your router/switch to be sure. I would also do a file transfer from one host to another just to see what the network is doing outside of the WD NAS.

 

[spidey07]

Wireless is slow and those numbers Are not out of the ordinary depending on the environment and other noise.

if every component is wired then make sure your not using homemade cables and that all nice are set to auto negotiate stepped and duplex. Nothing forced which cause a duplex mismatch

 

[Ghiedo27]

You literally can't get a duplex mismatch or the wrong speed? I figured it would be long odds, but it's pretty sweet if auto negotiate is that good.

 

[spidey07]

If one side is forced to 100 full, the auto side will be half duplex. Very common cause of poor performance. Right after bad or homemade cables.

 

[cebalrai]

That's with no wireless device at all involved, right? The NAS is plugged into the router and the computer with the 4GB movie is also plugged in? Have you checked to make sure everything negotiated to the right speed? Using the web interface my netgear router has it under the "Router Status" tab at the bottom in "show statistics." Can you see you check your connection with the software that came with it?

Either way, I would try a another cable and port on your router/switch to be sure. I would also do a file transfer from one host to another just to see what the network is doing outside of the WD NAS.

Correct, that's with no wireless at all.

Fiber optic modem wired to Netgear N600 router ....

-> Ethernet cable to laptop with wireless turned off
-> Ethernet cable to WD NAS

I don't know what a homemade cable is. I just use the ones I get with my hardware. I'll try swapping out the router-NAS cable later on when I get home.

Wireless is slow and those numbers Are not out of the ordinary depending on the environment and other noise.

if every component is wired then make sure your not using homemade cables and that all nice are set to auto negotiate stepped and duplex. Nothing forced which cause a duplex mismatch

There's no noise. I live on the edge of a small Japanese town with forest all around me.

Let me see if I can find something in my settings...

 

[cebalrai]

Update: I just tried transferring a large file from one laptop to another without the NAS involved... And I got a miserable 2.8 mbps transfer rate

Also I don't see any settings for "auto-negotiate" or "duplex. On the 2.4 ghz and 5 ghz networks I have mode settings for up to 54/145/300 mbps and I have them set at 300. Bandwidth control is turned off. IPv6 is disabled.

 

[spidey07]

Then that is a duplex mismatch or bad cable. Even factory cables can be bad, it's rare but it does happen.

I assume cat5 or higher cable?

Regarding noise microwaves, cordless phones, improper antenna orientation, blue tooth, baby monitors, wirelesd anything can all cause low signal to noise ratios.

 

[cebalrai]

Then that is a duplex mismatch or bad cable. Even factory cables can be bad, it's rare but it does happen.

I assume cat5 or higher cable?

Regarding noise microwaves, cordless phones, improper antenna orientation, blue tooth, baby monitors, wirelesd anything can all cause low signal to noise ratios.

I don't see how noise could be the problem if the slowness is exactly the same using a wired connection.

Regarding cables, which one would you say is suspect? And I'm not sure if my cables are cat5. Thirdly, what's a duplex mismatch?

Here's something maybe... Copying files from my laptop on the 5 ghz band to one on the 2.4 ghz band works at about 5.45 mbps, and copying them back the other way works at 4.5 mbps. The one on the 5ghz band has an SSD if that matters.

But copying files from the SSD laptop to the NAS works at a dismal 1.6 mbps.

 

[spidey07]

Take wireless totally out of the picture.

Im not guessing here. I make my living out of this for a very long time. Let's fix your wired networking performance first.

 

[cebalrai]

Take wireless totally out of the picture.

Im not guessing here. I make my living out of this for a very long time. Let's fix your wired networking performance first.

Ok so I do have all cat 5 cables. I swapped every one and it made no difference.

Swapping cables and power cycling does do something though. My transfer speed goes up to 10 mbps (both wired and wireless)... But after a minute or two it drops back to horribly slow. This is all PC-to-PC transferring. Transferring to/from the NAS remains the same bad speed.

Also the green light on my NAS is blinking. Maybe it's malfunctioning but its self diagnostic utility says nothing is wrong... And it seems to work fine other than the slowness that's impacting the entire network.

I also tried disconnecting the NAS and doing a PC-to-PC transfer but it didn't have an impact.

Thoughts? Could my new router be defective? And thanks for helping.

 

[Ghiedo27]

The blinking green light on your NAS just indicates disk activity. Half duplex means only one host can send at a time (think walkie-talkie with the button). Full duplex means both sides can send at the same time. A mismatch is when one hosts thinks it's a full duplex connection and the other thinks it's half duplex. This can make things super slow.

Do you still have your old router? I would try putting the hosts on it (wired connections only). That would be a quick / cheap way to (sort of) verify it's a configuration or wiring problem and not a bad router out of the box. I'd still poke around the web interface (the 192.168.1.1 configuration page) but that's me and I like to see something to believe it. Verify that the host shows the identical information.

 

[cebalrai]

The blinking green light on your NAS just indicates disk activity. Half duplex means only one host can send at a time (think walkie-talkie with the button). Full duplex means both sides can send at the same time. A mismatch is when one hosts thinks it's a full duplex connection and the other thinks it's half duplex. This can make things super slow.

Do you still have your old router? I would try putting the hosts on it (wired connections only). That would be a quick / cheap way to (sort of) verify it's a configuration or wiring problem and not a bad router out of the box. I'd still poke around the web interface (the 192.168.1.1 configuration page) but that's me and I like to see something to believe it. Verify that the host shows the identical information.

Can you tell me where I would see the duplex settings on my PC? Can't seem to find that... But no... I've searched every single page in the router interface and there's nothing about duplex... What does that mean?

The old router was actually a little bit slower. I hadn't tried it with a wired connection though...

UPDATE: I tried the old router, wired, and got the same slowness. It actually slightly slower than the new router. Also on the old router's interface panel I see nothing about duplex settings either...

A quick look at speedtest.net shows a 19 ms ping and 29 mbps download, 18 mbps upload.

SECOND UPDATE: I located the speed & duplex settings on my PCs. They were both set to autonegotiate. What should they be set to? I put them both at 100 full and tried a file transfer between them and got 3.5 mbps. When I put them both at half duplex I get 4.5 mbps...

If it helps, the model number of my router is WNDR3700v3