Network Speed Issue

[Guest]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Ok, I have now purchased and installed a Gig NIC in the PC. This is connected to a Gig switch, then via a Gig Powerline device to another Gig Powerline device, then a second Gig switch, then into the Gigabit enabled NAS. The router is also connected via the switch, in order to provide IP addresses via DHCP.

Still utter crap.

The PC is, apparently, going to take 19 hours to transfer 1.17GB - or rather, it would if I let it.

Clearly the issue is Win 7.

Back to XP then.

[Curlyben]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Before you do that you need to rule out the powerline adapters.
Can you run the NAS directly off the first switch with the pc attached ?

[Jester]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Not convinced the prob is Win 7.

I have several Win 7 PC's connected to my Linux Server (and NAS are usually barebone-Linux) and I have none of the problems you have and I don't have Gb Ethernet.

One of the Win7 PC's is even running on an old P4 2.8Ghz with 2Gb RAM. Transfer speeds are fine. Is there any way of checking how file & print services are configured on that NAS device ?

[shamen]

Re: Network Speed Issue

When ethernet ramps up to full (link0 speed, then starts slowing and slowing once the transfer is going the answer is usually errors or collisions. If you see the same thing on a (non busy) wireless network, then look at the wired components - perhaps where the file is going to.

We used to see a similar issue quite a bit in datacentres where customers had used cheaper switches - the Os would be reporting Full Duplex 100mbs but the switch thought it was 100mbps half duplex. However, as you have had your nic cycle through each of those modes and the problem remained, you know its unlikely that your problem is the NIC or the switch port you are connected to.

Wires are a massive pain in the arse - sometimes too near a 240V wire and you can nobble the link. Powerline kit which introduce spurious signals or harmonics have also been known to screw things up. However, you say this also happens on wireless or wired so taking that into account, when you are sending this large file over wired or wireless - where is it being sent from/to? Any chance the nic or switch port on the destination are at fault here? Unplug everything except the Pc and the server you send the files to. Put them on the same switch. See if the problem remains then start to diagnose from that baseline setup.

Good luck!

[shamen]

Re: Network Speed Issue

erm, just noticed there was already help going on. Not sure why I didnt see that before I made that post *hick* Sorry to butt in!

[Jester]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Cet - You might also want to have a read of this link. Windows 7, by default, is not compatible with older versions of Samba (such as that used by NAS devices). Therefore, there are some steps you need to take.

The following article will help you. I know you are not getting trouble with actually connecting to the NAS, but the article also goes into some other settings that CAN affect system performance on shared drives. I had to go thru these steps to get Windows 7 to see the shares I have configured on my Ubuntu File & Print Server.

Windows 7 Network File Sharing Fix Tanner Williamson


If that doesn't work, then say so and I will try to help you further. But as I have said above, I have several Windows 7 machines (laptop and desktop) connecting to my shares and do not have performance issues. I also have Windows XP, Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, Apple Mac and even one Windows Vista Desktop all connecting at the same performance levels (i.e. fast !!).

[Guest]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Thanks for the replies.

I would also rule out Win 7 were it not for the fact that an XP machine, two Vista machines and a multitude of other devices also read and write to that NAS without issue. The problem resides squarely with this PC and the configuration. Before I "upgraded" to Win 7, I was using XP Pro and it was lightning fast.

As for the link above, I just followed the instructions - and it is going to take 11 minutes to copy 277MB.

I get Network Utilisation of less than 4% and nobody is doing anything else on the LAN. I never got this with XP, I don't get it with Vista and I can stream HD media around without issue to the various places that I want it. The culprit is Windows 7 on this PC. (Oh and it still says 11 minutes and I began this at least five minutes ago.)

The NAS drive is purely for storage, it does not handle any print functions, since my network printers are connected via the Gig switch in my office.

(Quick (no pun intended) status update the transfer of 277MB is now going to take 15 minutes, no wait, 18 minutes since the network utilisation has now collapsed to barely 1%.

As my son would remark, why is the network being gay?

[Guest]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Before you do that you need to rule out the powerline adapters.
Can you run the NAS directly off the first switch with the pc attached ?

Ok, I have the NAS on my desk, plugged into the switch, along with my PC, also connected via the switch. The Link/Act LED indicates it is connected at 1000MBps and initially, the transfer of 1.17GB was going to take six minutes, with around 25% network utilisation.

However, this very rapidly collapsed to 0.15% and the time increased to 17 hours.

So, yes I can, but it does not make a blind bit of difference.

Out of interest, I tried the same 277MB file I was trying earlier - still no joy although I did see an increase of 0.02%...

[shell]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Is there an english translation of this thread anywhere?

[Jester]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Cet - Am a bit pushed for time at the moment due to the fact that I am trying to cook food and then get ready to go out and start the karaoke disco by 6.30pm.

I'll have a deeper look into this tomorrow if that's alright. I'm sure CB and others might have some suggestions in the meantime. If any of them actually solve the problem then let us know. Otherwise I'll be of more help to you tomorrow.

Cheers

[Guest]

Re: Network Speed Issue

There's no rush, enjoy your New Year.

[Jester]

Re: Network Speed Issue

I've been reading up on this. There are a myriad of people reporting problems using NAS and Windows 7.

Seems to be an issue in that Windows 7 uses SMB 2.1 (the only other Windows O/S that does this is Server 2008). In most cases, NAS drives use SMB 2.0 (some even use SMB 1.0). There seems to be a problem identified in that SMB 2.1 auto-negotiates block sizes ect, whereas previous versions tended to use fixed block sizes.

As far as I can tell, there does not appear to have been a solution to this. I would presume that the problem can therefore be overcome by forcing Windows 7 to revert to using SMB 2.0. Am working on seeing if this can be done, but it aint something easily discoverable.

One should be able to find such a setting in the Registry but I have not identified it as yet.

TBH, with the number of reports of this problem that there are on the internet, I am surprised that Microsoft do not appear to have released a fix for this.

FYI, this problem only seems to happen on NAS devices. Most Linux and MS installations seem to handle it because they can be configured on the 'Server' end. Something you cannot do with NAS devices (even though they are simple Linux servers).

It does to be an annoying fudge, but something that I believe can be resolved. The irony is that MS appear to have known about this for some time !!

[Guest]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Thanks for this information. This does make since, since I altered the Ethernet Frame size Frame Rate from the default (1518bytes) to both jumbo frame sizes that were available but to no avail.

It seems that Linux and Windows, not to mention all the chip vendors out there, treat anything larger than 1522 bytes as a jumbo frame. Therefore, settings are unlikely to match and thus no benefit can be had. My switch does support frame sizes up to 9600 bytes, so that should not be the limiting factor.

The NIC was set to 7K, but this had no discernable effect either, so should this be disabled, or is this a red herring and the SMB version is the real problem?

[paulb2905]

Re: Network Speed Issue

Adding NAS folders to Windows 7 Libraries. By default Windows 7 doesn’t support adding NAS folder locations to your Libraries, Chris Hunkele tells us that the reason for this limitation is that the remote host serving up the folders must be running the new Indexing Service — which most 3rd party NAS’s (like the ReadyNAS series) won’t be running. You can work around this issue two different ways:

1. If you are just trying to replace your My Music, My Videos, etc. folders with NAS-located folders, bring up the properties for those folders, go to the Locations tab, and “Move” the location from the current hard-drive location to your NAS location:
   
2. If you are trying to add additional folders to the libraries that are on your NAS, you can use this tip using mklink (sort of like Unix’s symlinks) to link what Windows thought was a local dir, out to a NAS-located dir out from under it, allowing you to get NAS folders into your libraries.

Also try here Samba network share issue with Windows 7 - Windows 7 Forums


Also im guessing you could try an update for the NAS itself (note havent got NAS, been thinking about getting one perhaps ill hold off!)

[Guest]

Re: Network Speed Issue

I can see and access all the folders on the NAS, this is not the issue. The issue is network speed. I have a Gigabit network, but copying a file from my Win 7 PC to the NAS can take hours, when it should take minutes. For example, it takes three hours to transfer 3GB, when it should be over in minutes.